The Recovery of an Anisotropic Conductivity in Groundwater Modelling

In order to model groundwater flow effectively, one is faced inevitably with the problem of suitably estimating the various subsurface parameters in the differential equations governing the flow from measurements, over time, of the piezometric head at various well sites, together with certain ancillary data. A new method is presented that allows for the estimation of an anisotropic hydraulic conductivity as the unique global minimum of a convex functional.