Least-Squares Inversion of DC Resistivity Data Acquired over Dynamically Changing Earth Model

In the geophysical monitoring to understand the change of subsurface material properties with time, the time-invariant static subsurface model is commonly adopted to reconstruct a time-lapse image. This assumption of static model, however, can be invalid particularly when fluid migrates very quickly in highly permeable medium in the brine injection experiment. In such case, the resultant subsurface images may be severely distorted. In order to alleviate this problem, we develop a new least-squares inversion algorithm under the assumption that the subsurface model will change continuously in time. Instead of sampling a time-space model into numerous space models with a regular time interval, a few reference models in space domain at different times pre-selected are used to describe the subsurface structure continuously changing in time; the material property at a certain space coordinate are assumed to change linearly in time. Consequently, finding a space-time model can be simplified into obtaining several reference space models. The regularization along time axis is introduced assuming that the subsurface model will not change significantly during the data acquisition. The performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by the numerical experiments using the synthetic data of crosshole dc resistivity tomography.