The usefulness of outcrop analogue air permeameter measurements for analyzing aquifer heterogeneity: quantifying outcrop hydraulic conductivity and its spatial variability

This paper investigates the use of air permeameter measurements on outcrops of unconsolidated sediments to quantify hydraulic conductivity (K) and its spatial heterogeneity on a broad range of sediment types. The Neogene aquifer in northern Belgium is used as a case study for this purpose. To characterize the variability in K, 511 small-scale air permeability measurements were performed on outcrop sediments representative over five of the aquifer’s lithostratigraphic units. From these measurements, outcrop-scale equivalent K tensors were calculated using numerical upscaling techniques. Validation of the air permeameter-based K values by comparison with laboratory constant head K measurements reveals a correlation of 0.93. Overall, the results indicate that hand-held air permeameters are very efficient and accurate tools to characterize saturated K, as well as its small-scale variability and anisotropy on a broad range of unconsolidated sediments. The studied outcrops further provided a qualitative understanding of aquifer hydrostratigraphy and quantitative estimates about K variability at the centimetre-scale to metre-scale.