Unconventional reservoirs, including organic-rich shales, tight sandstones, and low-permeability carbonates, present major challenges for petrophysical characterization and formation evaluation because of their strong heterogeneity, anisotropy, complex pore systems, and rock–fluid interactions. Addressing these challenges requires linking pore-scale physical processes and laboratory measurements with borehole observations and reservoir-scale interpretation.

This session focuses on advances in the petrophysical characterization and formation evaluation of unconventional reservoirs across multiple spatial scales. We welcome contributions on advanced wireline and logging-while-drilling methods; pore structure, fluid occurrence, and transport properties investigated through imaging, digital rock physics, NMR, and laboratory measurements; rock-physics relationships, forward modeling, and joint or multiphysics inversion; integration of core, logging, seismic, and production data; and geomechanical and fracture characterization for reservoir evaluation and development.

The session also welcomes data-driven and physics-informed approaches for reservoir-property estimation, sweet-spot identification, and uncertainty quantification, particularly studies emphasizing interpretability, generalization, and reliability. We especially encourage contributions that connect fundamental physical understanding with practical formation-evaluation challenges, integrate observations across pore, core, borehole, and reservoir scales, and critically assess the limitations and transferability of emerging characterization methods.