Sensitivity analysis for joint inversion of ground-penetratingradar and thermal-hydrological data from a large-scale underground heatertest

We describe a joint inversion approach that combinesgeophysical and thermal-hydrological data for the estimation of (1)thermal-hydrological parameters (such as permeability, porosity, thermalconductivity, and parameters of the capillary pressure and relativepermeability functions) that are necessary for predicting the flow offluids and heat in fractured porous media, and (2) parameters of thepetrophysical function that relates water saturation, porosity andtemperature to the dielectric constant. The approach incorporates thecoupled simulation of nonisothermal multiphase fluid flow andground-penetrating radar (GPR) travel times within an optimizationframework. We discuss application of the approach to a large-scale insitu heater test which was conducted at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, to betterunderstand the coupled thermal, hydrological, mechanical, and chemicalprocesses that may occur in the fractured rock mass around a geologicrepository for high-level radioactive waste. We provide a description ofthe time-lapse geophysical data (i.e., cross-borehole ground-penetratingradar) and thermal-hydrological data (i.e., temperature and water contentdata) collected before and during the four-year heating phase of thetest, and analyze the sensitivity of the most relevantthermal-hydrological and petrophysical parameters to the available data.To demonstrate feasibility of the approach, and as a first step towardcomprehensive inversion of the heater test data, we apply the approach toestimate one parameter, the permeability of the rock matrix

Extending colonic mucosal microbiome analysis - Assessment of colonic lavage as a proxy for endoscopic colonic biopsies

This study was supported through GI Research funds and MRC Grant Ref: MR/M00533X/1 to GH.Peer reviewedPublisher PD