Estimating the hydraulic conductivity at the South Oyster Site from geophysical tomographic data using Bayesian techniques based on the normal linear regression model

This study explores the use of ground penetrating radar (GPR) tomographic velocity, GPR tomographic attenuation, and seismic tomographic velocity for hydraulic conductivity estimation at the South Oyster Site, using a Bayesian framework. Since site-specific relations between hydraulic conductivity and geophysical properties are often nonlinear and subject to a large degree of uncertainty such as at this site, we developed a normal linear regression model that allows exploring these relationships systematically. Although the log-conductivity displays a small variation (σ² = 0.30) and the geophysical data vary over only a small range, results indicate that the geophysical data improve the estimates of the hydraulic conductivity. The improvement is the most significant where prior information is limited. Among the geophysical data, GPR and seismic velocity are more useful than GPR attenuation.