Determination of hydraulic conductivities of low permeability materials in the Sierra Ladrones Formation, Albuquerque basin

Low permeability materials in the Sierra Ladrones Formation were sampled and analyzed to determine their hydraulic conductivities using the falling head centrifugation method (fc) as described by Nimmo et al. (1991). The method is similar to the traditional falling head method, only it uses greatly increased centrifugal forces, allowing measurements to make in a relatively short amount of time. Using these measurements, variations in saturated hydraulic conductivities between different sediment types were analyzed using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). Sampling resulted in useable data chiefly from the clay and silt facies of the formation. The range of conductivities determined are representative of brown and red clays, and silts which make up the overbank deposits of this region. Hydraulic conductivities for these overbank fines were found to range from approximately log K = {minus}9 m/s to log K = {minus}7 m/s. The upper measurement limit of the centrifuge apparatus was determined to be approximately 1.43 {times} 10{sup {minus}7} m/s and the lower limit was approximately 7.6 {times} 10{sup {minus}12} m/s