This U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data release represents the Minnesota component of the National Water-Well Database (NWWDB). The NWWDB is a compilation of water-well records from state-managed databases that have been standardized to a common format for consistency across state and administrative boundaries. Water-well completion reports that are submitted to permitting state agencies by licensed drillers constitute a large source of hydrogeologic information, including the locations and distribution of water wells, construction materials and completion depths, lithologic logs, groundwater levels, and the results of pumping or aquifer tests. Standardization was performed based on a USGS profile of the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) GroundWaterML2 (GWML2) standard (https://docs.ogc.org/is/19-013/19-013.html). Two datasets are available for the state of Minnesota: 1) original water-well records, provided as received from host repositories at the state level except for standardization by the USGS per OGC GWML2, and 2) water-well records which have received additional processing by the USGS involving the application of quality-assurance rules, harmonization of lithologic descriptions around a common codeset, and estimates of transmissivity for the water-bearing intervals of water wells based on specific-capacity data. Statewide downloads are provided in the OGC GeoPackage (.gpkg) file format.
