The emergence of hydrogeophysics for improved understanding of subsurface processes over multiple scales

By A. Binley, S. Hubbard, J. Huisman, André Revil, David A. Robinson, K. Singha, L. Slater. Water Resources Research, 2015

680 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Geophysics provides a multidimensional suite of investigative methods that are transforming our ability to see into the very fabric of the subsurface environment, and monitor the dynamics of its fluids and the biogeochemical reactions that occur within it. Here we document how geophysical methods have emerged as valuable tools for investigating shallow subsurface processes over the past two decades and offer a vision for future developments relevant to hydrology and also ecosystem science. The field of “hydrogeophysics” arose in the late 1990s, prompted, in part, by the wealth of studies on stochastic subsurface hydrology that argued for better field‐based investigative techniques. These new hydrogeophysical approaches benefited from the emergence of practical and robust data inversion techniques, in many cases with a view to quantify shallow subsurface heterogeneity and the associated dynamics of subsurface fluids. Furthermore, the need for quantitative characterization stimulated a wealth of new investigations into petrophysical relationships that link hydrologically relevant properties to measurable geophysical parameters. Development of time‐lapse approaches provided a new suite of tools for hydrological investigation, enhanced further with the realization that some geophysical properties may be sensitive to biogeochemical transformations in the subsurface environment, thus opening up the new field of “biogeophysics.” Early hydrogeophysical studies often concentrated on relatively small “plot‐scale” experiments. More recently, however, the translation to larger‐scale characterization has been the focus of a number of studies. Geophysical technologies continue to develop, driven, in part, by the increasing need to understand and quantify key processes controlling sustainable water resources and ecosystem services.

Subfields: Geophysics, Ocean Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/53db6f0d0af06541ae0ba19a719da36ff9d7054a

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Geophysics

1. André Revil
2. Marios Karaoulis
3. Nicolas Florsch
4. P. Glover
5. M. Skold

In Ocean Engineering

1. André Revil
2. Marios Karaoulis
3. Li Li
4. Albert J. Valocchi
5. Nicolas Florsch
6. P. Glover
7. M. Skold

Citations in the corpus

• Expanding the role of reactive transport models in critical zone processes (2017, background): “The field of hydrogeophysics has grown enormously with the development of non-destructive imaging to allow glimpses into complex subsurface processes (Binley et al., 2015; Parsekian et al., 2015; St. Clair et al., 2015).”
• Complex conductivity of soils (2017, methodology): “It extends the classical Direct Current (DC) resistivity method, which has been broadly used in hydrogeophysics in the last two decades [e.g., Johnson et al., 2010; Binley et al., 2015].”