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Bayesian Poroelastic Aquifer Characterization From InSAR Surface Deformation Data. Part I: Maximum A Posteriori Estimate

Journal Article · · Water Resources Research
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1029/2020wr027391· OSTI ID:1853043
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4]
  1. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Oden Inst. for Computational Engineering and Sciences; Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
  2. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Oden Inst. for Computational Engineering and Sciences; Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Geological Sciences
  3. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Geological Sciences; Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Aerospace Engineering & Engineering Mechanics
  4. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Oden Inst. for Computational Engineering and Sciences; Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Geological Sciences; Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States). Mechanical Engineering

Characterizing the properties of groundwater aquifers is essential for predicting aquifer response and managing groundwater resources. In this work, we develop a high-dimensional scalable Bayesian inversion framework governed by a three-dimensional quasi-static linear poroelastic model to characterize lateral permeability variations in groundwater aquifers. In this work, we determine the maximum a posteriori (MAP) point of the posterior permeability distribution from centimeter-level surface deformation measurements obtained from Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR). The scalability of our method to high parameter dimension is achieved through the use of adjoint-based derivatives, inexact Newton methods to determine the MAP point, and a Mat´ern class sparse prior precision operator. Together, these guarantee that the MAP point is found at a cost, measured in number of forward/adjoint poroelasticity solves, that is independent of the parameter dimension. We apply our methodology to a test case for a municipal well in Mesquite, Nevada, in which InSAR and GPS surface deformation data are available. We solve problems with up to 320,824 state variable degrees of freedom (DOFs) and 16,896 parameter DOFs. A consistent treatment of noise level is employed so that the aquifer characterization result does not depend on the pixel spacing of surface deformation data. Our results show that the use of InSAR data significantly improves characterization of lateral aquifer heterogeneity, and the InSAR-based aquifer characterization recovers complex lateral displacement trends observed by independent daily GPS measurements.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0019303
OSTI ID:
1853043
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1786803
Journal Information:
Water Resources Research, Journal Name: Water Resources Research Journal Issue: 10 Vol. 56; ISSN 0043-1397
Publisher:
American Geophysical Union (AGU)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English

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