UC Irvine

Low frequency loop-loop electromagnetic induction (EMI) is a widely-used geophysical measurement method to rapidly measure in situ the apparent electrical conductivity (ECa) of variably-saturated soils. Here, we couple Bayesian inversion of a quasi-two-dimensional electromagnetic (EM) model with image compression via the discrete cosine transform (DCT) for subsurface electrical conductivity (EC) imaging. The subsurface EC distributions are obtained from multi-configuration EMI data measured with a CMD-Explorer sensor along two transects in the Chicken Creek catchment (Brandenburg, Germany). Dipole-dipole electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) data are used to benchmark the inferred EC fields of both transects. We are especially concerned with the impact of the DCT truncation method on the accuracy and reliability of the inversely-estimated EC images. We contrast the results of two different truncation approaches for model parametrization. The first scenario considers an arbitrary selection of the dominant DCT coefficients and their prior distributions (a commonly-used approach), while the second methodology benefits from geostatistical simulation of the EMI data pseudosection. This study demonstrates that DCT truncation based on geostatistical simulations facilitates a robust selection of the dominant DCT coefficients and their prior ranges, resulting in more accurate subsurface EC imaging from multi-configuration EMI data. Results based on geostatistical prior modeling present an excellent agreement between the EMI- and ERT-derived EC fields of the Chicken Creek catchment.