• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.1-23
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• 2022

For its essential importance as a resource, sustainable development of groundwater has been major research interests for many decades. Conventional characterization of aquifer and groundwater has relied on borehole data from observation well. Although borehole data provide useful information on yield and flow of groundwater, it is often difficult and sometimes costly to estimate the spatial distribution of groundwater in entire aquifer. Geophysical probing is an alternative techique that provides such information due to its capability to image subsurface structures as well as to delineate spatial distribution of hydraulic parameters. This study presents various technical information about geophysical probing to estimate main characteristics of aquifer for groundwater exploitation. Subsequently, we analyzed representative cases, in which geophysical methods were applied to identify the location of the groundwater, classify freshwater and brine, derive hydraulic constants, and monitor groundwater.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2006.04a
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• pp.92-96
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• 2006

Borehole geophysical techniques were adopted for characterizing aquifer properties of crystalline rock formation in Bongmyong borehole test site, Kangwon National University. Specific fractures and/or fracture zones accompanying groundwater flow were delineated well by high resolution flowmeter and dilution measurements, and could be confirmed fromconventional well log methods. These geophysical techniques have been proved to be the most effective in aquifer characterization in crystalline rock formation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2003.09a
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• pp.565-569
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• 2003

One-year-long groundwater-level data have been collected from 18 wells in Cheon-an area. The result of barometric efficiency, autocorrelation, cross-correlation and statistical distribution evaluated from the measurement data shows that groundwater-level measurements from observation wells are the principal source of information about aquifer characteristics. Data from WA-2 has high barometric efficiency as well as steady decreasing auto-correlation coefficient, which means nonleaky confined aquifer, Most aquifers in this study show the unconfined properties so that barometric efficiencies are mostly low and the coefficients of cross-correlation between groundwater-level and precipitation are commonly high. This study showed that the long-term groundwater-level monitoring data without artificial stress such as pumping would give accurate information about aquifer characteristics.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.87-97
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• 2020

In this study, the applicability of the geostatistical evolution strategy as an inverse analysis method of estimating hydraulic properties of small-scale basin was tested. The geostatistical evolution strategy is a type of data assimilation method that can effectively estimate aquifer hydraulic conductivity by combining a global optimization model of the evolution strategy and a local optimization model of the ensemble Kalman filtering. In the applicability test, the geometry, hydraulic boundary conditions, and the distribution of groundwater monitoring wells of Hanlim-Eup were employed. On the other hand, a synthetic hydraulic conductivity distribution was generated and used as the reference property for ease of estimation quality assessment. In the estimations, two different cases were tested where, in Case I, both groundwater levels and hydraulic conductivity measurements were assumed to be available, and only the groundwater levels were available, in Case II. In both cases, the reference and estimated hydraulic conductivity fields were found to show reasonable similarity, even though the prior information for estimation was not accurate. The ability to estimate hydraulic conductivity without accurate prior information suggests that this method can be used effectively to estimate mathematical properties in real-world cases, many of which little prior information is available for the aquifer conditions.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2002.04a
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• pp.106-109
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• 2002

In order to delineate the flow system of fractured hard rock aquifer, numerical experiments are conducted and the results are analyzed with Mote Carlo simulation. The results show that the percolation threshold and the effective conductivity of a fracture network can be estimated with power law exponent (a) and fracture intensity. But the dependability of the estimated value relies on the percolation threshold, the system scale, and the characterization level.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.47 no.6
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• pp.625-633
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• 2014

The Aquistore project is the world's first commercial capture, transportation, utilization and storage project of post-combustion $CO_2$ from a coal-fired thermo electric power plant, and the proposed storage is a saline aquifer at a depth of about 3,500 m. Deep saline aquifer, compared to hydrocarbon reservoir, provides the great volumetric potential for storage of $CO_2$ anywhere in the world, therefore the research results from the project may be exported globally to other sites. Geological $CO_2$ storage characterization for saline aquifer instead of hydrocarbon reservoir needs to estimate the geophysical properties of subsurface geology. This study calculated the geophysical property of water-saturated formation by applying amplitude variation analysis developed from oil and gas exploration. We correlated horizon tops at the well logs to seismic traveltime of 1,815 and 1,857 ms as Winnipeg and Deadwood formations. Gradient analysis from seismic traces showed correlation coefficient of 45 - 81 % on amplitude variation with respect to incident angle. Crossplot of intercept and gradient shows the inverse proportional trend which represents typical water saturated sediments. Product attribute of intercept and gradient described the base of wet sediment. Poisson's ratio change attribute increased at the top of target area satisfying with wet sediment and decreased at the top of basement in a dry rock bed.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.101-113
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• 2016

To properly manage and remediate groundwater contaminated with chlorinated hydrocarbons such as trichloroethylene (TCE), it is necessary to assess natural attenuation processes of contaminants in the aquifer along with investigation of contamination history and aquifer characterization. This study evaluated natural attenuation processes of TCE at an industrial site in Korea by delineating hydrogeochemical characteristics along the flow path of contaminated groundwater, by calculating reaction rate constants for TCE and its degradation products, and by using geochemical and reactive transport modeling. The monitoring data showed that TCE tended to be transformed to cis-1,2-dichloroethene (cis-1,2-DCE) and further to vinyl chloride (VC) via microbial reductive dechlorination, although the degree was not too significant. According to our modeling results, the temporal and spatial distribution of the TCE plume suggested the dominant role of biodegradation in attenuation processes. This study can provide a useful method for assessing natural attenuation processes in the aquifer contaminated with chlorinated hydrocarbons and can be applied to other sites with similar hydrological, microbiological, and geochemical settings.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.192-203
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• 2016

A field investigation was conducted on an aquifer contaminated with trichloroethylene (TCE) for application of in situ reactive zone treatment using nanosized zero-valent iron (NZVI). The aquifer was an unconfined aquifer with a mean hydraulic conductivity of $5.14{\times}10^{-4}cm/sec$, which would be favorable for NZVI injection. Seasonal monitoring of TCE concentration revealed a presence of non-aqueous phase liquid form of TCE near IW (injection well). The hydrochemical data characterized the site groundwater to be a $Ca-HCO_3$ type. The average value of Langelier Saturation Index of the groundwater was -1.33, which implied that the site was favorable for corrosion of NZVI. Dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration varied between 2.5~11.5 mg/L, which indicated that DO would greatly compete with TCE as an electron acceptor. The hydrogeological and hydrochemical characterization reveals that the time around November would be appropriate for NZVI injection when water level and temperature are relatively high and DO concentration is low.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.293-304
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• 2017

This study was performed in order to hydrogeological analysis of aquifer, which is a necessary part for evaluating the efficiency of the combined well and open-closed loops geothermal (CWG) systems. CWG systems have been proposed for the effective utilization of geothermal energy by combining open loop geothermal systems and closed loop geothermal systems. Small aperture CWG systems and large aperture CWG systems were installed at a green house land with water curtain facilities in Chungju City. Aquifer tests include pumping tests and step-drawdown tests were conducted to analyse hydrogeological characteristics of aquifer in the study area. The transmissivity was estimated in the range of $13.49{\sim}58.99cm^2/sec$, and the storativity was estimated in the range of $1.13{\times}10^{-5}{\sim}5.20{\times}10^{-3}$. The geochemical analysis showed $Ca^{2+}$ ion and ${HCO_3}^-$ ion were dominant in groundwater. The Langelier Saturation Index and the Ryznar Stability Index showed low scaling potential of groundwater. In the analysis of vertical water temperature change, the geothermal gradient was estimated as $2.1^{\circ}C/100m$, which indicated the aquifer was enough for geothermal systems. In conclusion, groundwater is rich, can stably use geothermal heat, and it is less likely to cause deterioration of thermal energy efficiency by precipitation of carbonate minerals in study area. Therefore, the study area is suitable for installation of the combined geothermal system.

• Economic and Environmental Geology
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• v.53 no.6
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• pp.703-713
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• 2020

In many geological fields, including hydrogeology, it is of great importance to determine the heterogeneity of the subsurface media. This study briefly introduces the concept and theory of the method that can estimate the hydraulic properties of the media constituting the aquifer, which was recently introduced by Park (2020). After the introduction, the method was applied to the synthetic aquifer to demonstrate the practicality, from which various implications were drawn. The introduced technique uses a global optimization technique called the covariance matrix adaptation evolution strategy (CMA-ES). Conceptually, it is a methodology to characterize the aquifer heterogeneity by assimilating the groundwater level time-series data due to the imposed hydraulic stress. As a result of applying the developed technique to estimate the hydraulic conductivity of a hypothetical aquifer, it was confirmed that a total of 40000 unknown values were estimated in an affordable computational time. In addition, the results of the estimates showed a close numerical and structural similarity to the reference hydraulic conductivity field, confirming that the quality of the estimation by the proposed method is high. In this study, the developed method was applied to a limited case, but it is expected that it can be applied to a wider variety of cases through additional development of the method. The development technique has the potential to be applied not only to the field of hydrogeology, but also to various fields of geology and geophysics. Further development of the method is currently underway.