Nuclear Magnetic Resonance: From Pore-Scale Physics to Field-Scale Hydrogeophysics

Proton nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) has the potential to provide a wealth of information about the physical and chemical properties of geological materials. Probed in the NMR measurement is the pore-scale environment of hydrogen nuclei (protons) in the water, or the other fluids, within the pore space of a soil, sediment or rock. Like many other forms of geophysical measurement, NMR has been developed to obtain estimates of material properties, defined at the macroscopic scale, for applications at the field-scale. But to truly understand the measurement, and thus improve the accuracy of the derived material-property estimates, we need to understand the pore-scale physics in which molecular-scale processes interact with nanoscale to macroscale heterogeneity to yield the field-scale response.