The U.S. Geological Survey furnishes maps depicting saturated thickness of the High Plains aquifer to the Southwest Kansas Groundwater Management District No. 3 through a continuing cooperative agreement. The Groundwater Management District uses the maps to calculated a planned depletion rate of 40 percent of the saturated thickness of the aquifer in 25 years for a 13-county area. Because the information contained on the maps is used in management decisions, the Groundwater Management District is concerned with the accuracy, reliability, and consistency of the hydrologic information that the maps show.
A mathematical technique, called kriging, has been used in the form of a computer program to interpolate hydrologic data based on a network of measured values (Karlinger and Skrivan, 1980). The technique has been applied to geohydrologic data in west-central Kansas with good results (Dunlap and Spinazola, 1981). The program calculates the values at the center of each 1-mile section in a predefined region and facilitates contouring of selected values. The kriging technique was used to produce the hydrologic maps in this report.
