Improved hydrogeophysical characterization and monitoring through parallel modeling and inversion of time-domain resistivity and induced-polarization data
Electrical geophysical methods have found wide use in the growing discipline of hydrogeophysics, both for characterizing the electrical properties of the subsurface, and for monitoring subsurface processes in terms of the spatiotemporal changes in subsurface conductivity, chargeability, and source currents they govern. Current multichannel and multielectrode data collections systems are able to collect large amounts of data in relatively short periods of time. However, practitioners are often unable to fully utilize these large data sets and the information they contain due to the processing limitations of standard desktop computers. This limitation can be addressed by utilizing the storage and processing capabilities of high-performance parallel computing environments. We present a parallel distributed-memory forward and inverse modeling algorithm for analyzing resistivity and time-domain induced polarization data. The primary components of the parallel computations include distributed computation of the pole solutions in forward mode, distributed storage and computation of the Jacobian matrix in inverse mode, and parallel execution of the inverse equation solver. We demonstrate the corresponding parallel code for three efforts: (1) resistivity characterization of the Hanford 300 Area Integrated Field Research Challenge site in Hanford, WA; (2) resistivity characterization of a volcanic island in the southern Tyrrhenian Sea in Italy; and (3) resistivity and IP monitoring of biostimulation at a superfund site in Brandywine, MD. Inverse analysis of each of these data sets would be limited (or impossible) in a standard serial computing environment which underscores the need for high-performance computing to fully utilize the potential of electrical geophysical methods in hydrogeophysical applications.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - EM
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-05ID14517
- OSTI ID:
- 990351
- Report Number(s):
- INL/JOU-09-16448; GPYSA7; TRN: US201020%%351
- Journal Information:
- Geophysics, Vol. 75, Issue 5; ISSN 0016-8033
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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