Digital data sets that describe aquifer characteristics of the High Plains aquifer in western Oklahoma

Description

This data set consists of digital polygons of constant hydraulic conductivity values for the High Plains aquifer in Oklahoma. This area encompasses the panhandle counties of Cimarron, Texas, and Beaver, and the western counties of Harper, Ellis, Woodward, Dewey, and Roger Mills. The High Plains aquifer underlies approximately 7,000 square miles of Oklahoma and is used extensively for irrigation. The High Plains aquifer is a water-table aquifer and consists predominately of the Tertiary-age Ogallala Formation and overlying Quaternary-age alluvial and terrace deposits. In some areas the aquifer is absent and the underlying Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous-age rocks are exposed at the surface. These rocks are hydraulically connected with the aquifer in some areas. The High Plains aquifer is composed of interbedded sand, siltstone, clay, gravel, thin limestones, and caliche. The proportion of various lithological materials changes rapidly from place to place, but poorly sorted sand and gravel predominate. The rocks are poorly to moderately well cemented by calcium carbonate. The High Plains aquifer was divided into three zones with each zone having an assigned hydraulic conductivity that was used as input to a ground-water flow model on the High Plains aquifer. These values are 8.3 feet per day for the west zone, 16.2 feet per day for the central zone, and 19.3 feet per day for the east zone. The polygon boundaries and constant hydraulic conductivity values were constructed by extracting lines from digital surficial geology data sets based on a scale of 1:125,000 for the panhandle counties and 1:250,000 for the western counties. Some of the lines were digitized from maps in a published water-level elevation map for 1980. Ground-water flow models are numerical representations that simplify and aggregate natural systems. Models are not unique; different combinations of aquifer characteristics may produce similar results. Therefore, values of hydraulic conductivity used in the model and presented in this data set are not precise, but are within a reasonable range when compared to independently collected data.

Resources

Name Format Description Link
55 Landing page for access to the data https://doi.org/10.5066/P9CAY91X
55 Landing page for access to the data https://doi.org/10.5066/P9CAY91X
55 Landing page for access to the data https://doi.org/10.5066/P9CAY91X
55 Landing page for access to the data https://doi.org/10.5066/P9CAY91X
55 Landing page for access to the data https://doi.org/10.5066/P9CAY91X
55 Landing page for access to the data https://doi.org/10.5066/P9CAY91X
55 The metadata original format https://data.usgs.gov/datacatalog/metadata/USGS.08fb4a5c-e233-4c99-8822-c358b784cb64.xml

Tags

  • environment
  • hydraulic-conductivity
  • groundwater
  • high-plains-aquifer
  • aquifers
  • northwestern-oklahoma
  • western-counties-in-oklahoma
  • usgs-08fb4a5c-e233-4c99-8822-c358b784cb64
  • ogallala-aquifer
  • ground-water-vulnerability
  • geoscientificinformation
  • groundwater-vulnerability
  • inlandwaters
  • western-oklahoma
  • panhandle-of-oklahoma
  • ground-water
  • ogallala-formation

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