Geospatial data to assess karst aquifer systems between Albany and Buffalo, New York (ver. 4.0, January 2024)
Description
Using publicly available data for Herkimer and Otsego counties, New York, a series of geospatial overlays were created at 1:24,000 scale to examine the bedrock geology, groundwater table, soils, and surficial geology. Bedrock and surficial geology were refined using extant bedrock maps, well and borehole data from water- and gas-wells, soil data, and lidar data. Groundwater data were collected from New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and U.S. Geological Survey water-well databases to estimate the groundwater table. Soil data were used to examine soil thickness over bedrock and infiltration.
An inventory of closed depressions was created using reconditioned lidar-derived bare-earth digital elevation models (DEMs) and a modeled stream network. Closed depressions were identified from the processed DEMs using threshold criteria of 10 and 30 centimeters (3.9 and 11.8 inches) for depth and 100 square meters (1076 square feet) for area. A combination of hydrologic, mining, and cultural features was used to eliminate false positives and filter out features that overlie existing waterbodies, streams, and mines and to remove artificial dams along roadways and railways.
This data release includes shapefiles containing the well data information including location, well depth, depth to bedrock, and groundwater depth; bedrock geology; surficial geology; interpolated bedrock surface contours; interpolated groundwater surface contours; soil saturated hydraulic conductivity; soil classes; and modeled closed depressions of 10 cm and 30 cm depth thresholds. This release also contains rasters of the interpolated bedrock surface, interpolated groundwater surface and land use.