Estimation of effective aquifer hydraulic properties from an aquifer test with multi-well observations (Taiwan)

The representative anisotropic parameters for an aquifer located at the campus of the National Yunlin University of Science and Technology in Taiwan have been acquired. A constant-rate pumping test was carried out, and drawdown-time data were collected from ten observation wells. Applications of the conventional aquifer test analysis, which assumes aquifer homogeneity for each observed well hydrograph, yielded spatially varying transmissivity and storage coefficient estimates, contradicting the homogeneous assumption. A direct approach and a nonlinear-least squares minimization of distance-drawdown data were then employed to analyze anisotropy of the transmissivity of an equivalent homogeneous aquifer. Results show that the direction and values of anisotropic transmissivities vary with time and the estimates depend on the number of observation wells used. These field results are consistent with results from recent theoretical investigations which questioned the suitability of the conventional aquifer test analysis.