Aquifer Characterisation by Magnetic Resonance Field and Laboratory Measurements

In order to evaluate the potential and reliability of surface-NMR measurements for aquifer characterisation we compare a field dataset collected on a well known test site with sandy aquifers to the laboratory-NMR and hydrogeological measurements of porosity and hydraulic conductivity using cores samples and grain size analyses. The decay time distribution derived from the QT-inversion of the surface-NMR data shows good agreement to laboratory-NMR results. A comparison of the water contents and T2* decay times achieved from different inversion approaches, i.e., using lately developed QT-Inversion and SAMOVAR show similar results. For most parts of the subsurface, the hydraulic conductivity from field and laboratory-NMR agreed very well with values estimated from grain size analyses or measured in the laboratory. Disagreements especially in parts of the first aquifer need to be further evaluated.