| Abstract: | Hydrogeologic investigations of fractured rock are evolving toward increasing spatial and temporal resolution with increasing use of multilevel systems with 10 or more intervals in a single borehole, each with auto‐sampling sensors monitoring pressure, temperature or chemistry for weeks or months, creating large quantities of densely sampled data (time and space). These data are typically displayed as hydrographs for analysis of site‐specific controls on groundwater flow. We present a method for presentation of high density pressure head data from multilevel installations referred to as time‐elevation head (TEH) sections that improves visualization of spatial and temporal responses of the hydrogeologic system to external stresses. Data collected from two multilevel installations, each with 13 functioning pressure transducers monitoring the upper 40 m of a dolostone aquifer, over a period of 83 d, prior to, during and after a pumping test are used to present TEH sections and examples of data processing. TEH sections are produced using commercially available software designed for geophysical data collected at closely spaced intervals along sub‐parallel lines. These algorithms perform calculations orthogonally either in time (“X” axis) or elevation (“Y” axis) to interpolate a regular grid of head and subsequently when filtering is used to identify subtle trends within the data. The base and filtered TEH sections are used to interpret response of the system to transients and infer hydrogeologic characteristics of the site. The utility of the process is dependent on the precision and accuracy of the head data as well as an informed user to avoid introducing spurious features into the sections. |
