Preface

All groundwater investigations (including resource investigations, development of water supplies, and identification and remediation of contaminated sites) require deriving field-based values of basic hydrogeologic properties such as hydraulic conductivity, transmissivity and storativity. In the earlier Groundwater Project book Hydrogeologic Properties of Earth Materials and Principles of Groundwater Flow↗ (Woessner & Poeter, 2020) groundwater principles and parameters were defined. Discussion of methods to determine parameters focused on laboratory methods and referenced field hydraulic testing methods but did not provide details on application. This book is a companion to that earlier work, as well as a standalone document that provides foundational methods used to generate field-scale representations of common hydraulic parameters. The book presents a conceptual view of how hydraulic testing methods such as the pumping tests, slug tests, and testing with packers are applied, as well as the advantages and limitations of the underpinning analytical solutions. The book focuses on methods addressing simplified confined, leaky confined and unconfined groundwater systems. It explains how curve-matching of field test data to analytical models is used to interpret test results. Though software for analyzing hydraulic test data is briefly discussed, some of which include choices of several additional analytical models and one-button automated analysis, this book emphasizes basic concepts, principles, and methods. For application of available software, the reader is sent to the program websites and documentation. The main body of text along with many illustrations, examples, and exercises with solutions provide the reader with the information needed to correctly apply hydraulic testing and analytical methods. The authors bring over 60 years of academic teaching and research experience, and an additional 90 years of applied hydrogeology consulting to the production of this book.