Online Tool Illustrates Groundwater Resources in Texas Panhandle
New Web viewer gives insight to Gaines, Terry and Yoakum Counties
An interactive viewer to visualize groundwater resources in Gaines, Terry and Yoakum Counties, Texas, is now available from the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the Llano Estacado Underground Water Conservation District, Sandy Land Underground Water Conservation District and South Plains Underground Water Conservation District.
Groundwater users, resource managers and scientists can now access hydrogeologic information using the online tool. The technology utilized in this application has the potential to be applied to groundwater resources anywhere.
Declining groundwater levels in and around the Texas Panhandle have raised concerns about the amount of available groundwater and the potential for water-quality changes.
Scientists compiled more than 11,500 well records containing pertinent data, including those delineating the vertical extents of wells penetrating one or more of the units. Additional geophysical data were collected to improve the spatial coverage of available information across the study area and to reduce uncertainty regarding hydrogeologic unit extents.
Results provided a refined understanding of how the saturated thickness of the Ogallala and Edwards-Trinity aquifers vary throughout the study area.
In a related USGS report, one major finding shows that across the study area, the average altitude of the base of the Ogallala aquifer was approximately 1.7 feet lower compared to previous assessments. This suggests that there may be more water stored in the aquifer than previously estimated.
Get Our News
These items are in the RSS feed format (Really Simple Syndication) based on categories such as topics, locations, and more. You can install and RSS reader browser extension, software, or use a third-party service to receive immediate news updates depending on the feed that you have added. If you click the feed links below, they may look strange because they are simply XML code. An RSS reader can easily read this code and push out a notification to you when something new is posted to our site.