GEOL 1114 Groundwater

Earth’s Freshwater

– 0.6% of the hydrosphere is

groundwater
– Groundwater is the largest
reservoir of freshwater that is
readily available to humans
• Groundwater makes up ~30% of
all freshwater reservoirs (most
occurs as glacial ice)
• Groundwater makes up ~96% of
all liquid freshwater reservoirs
• Geological Importance of Groundwater
– As an erosional agent
• Dissolving soluble bedrock such as limestone
– Formation of caves and sinkholes
– Equalizer of stream flow
• Storage that sustains streams during dry periods
 A Basic Resource

• Every day in the United States we

use ~350 billion gallons of freshwater
– ~23 percent comes from groundwater
– Groundwater exists almost everywhere—
an advantage in places that lack available
surface water sources
• Used primarily for irrigation
 Distribution of Groundwater

• Most Groundwater Soaks into the Ground from

Precipitation
– Zone of soil moisture
– Zone of saturation
– The unsaturated zone (vadose zone)
 Distribution of Groundwater

– Zone of soil moisture is a zone where

water is held by molecular attraction on soil
particles in the near-surface zone
• Used by plants
• Evaporates directly back to the atmosphere
– Water not held in this zone percolates further
downward
 Distribution of Groundwater

– Zone of saturation is a zone where all of the

pore spaces are completely filled with water
• Also called the phreatic zone
• Water in the zone of saturation is groundwater
• The water table is the upper limit of the zone of
saturation
• Extending upward from the water table is the
capillary fringe
 Distribution of Groundwater

– The unsaturated zone (vadose zone) is the

area above the zone of saturation
• Pore spaces include both air and water
• Includes the zone of soil moisture
• Includes the capillary fringe—a region where
groundwater is held in pore spaces by surface
tension
 The Water Table
• Variations in the Water Table
– Depth is highly variable
– Varies seasonally and from year to year
• Precipitation variations affect the depth of the water table
– Shape is usually a subdued replica of the surface topography
– Except where it is at the surface, it cannot be observed directly
Monitoring the Water Table
Mapping the Water Table
Interactions Between Groundwater System and Streams
a basic link in the hydrologic cycle • Gaining streams
– Gain water from the inflow of groundwater through the
streambed
– Water table is higher than the stream surface
• Losing streams
– Lose water to the groundwater by outflow through the streambed
– Water table is lower than the stream surface
• Combination streams
Factors Influencing the Storage and
Movement of Groundwater

• Porosity
– The percentage of pore (open) spaces in a rock or sediment
is called porosity
• Depends on the size and shape of the grains, how well they are
sorted, and how tightly they are packed
– Poorly sorted sediments have a low porosity
– Most crystalline rocks only gain porosity through fractures
– Determines how much groundwater can be stored
Groundwater:

porosity and
the amount
of open space
in various
materials
Porosity
 Factors Influencing the Storage and
Movement of Groundwater
• Permeability, Aquitards, and Aquifers
– Permeability is the ability of a material to transmit a fluid
• Depends on the connectivity between pores
– An aquitard is an impermeable layer that hinders or prevents
water movement
• Example: clay
– An aquifer is permeable rock strata or sediment that transmits
groundwater freely
• Example: sands and gravels
Sorting and
permeability
Porous Sand

Porosity of loose sand - 40% or more

Reduced-Porosity Cemented Sandstone

Porosity of sandstone - up to 30%

Which point on the graph below indicates properties
that would make the most productive aquifer?
Aquifers in Oklahoma
Porosity and permeability generally
decrease with depth
the water table is dynamic
the water table is dynamic
 How Groundwater Moves

• Groundwater moves very slowly

– Average rate is 4 cm per day

• Simple Groundwater Flow System

– The force of gravity and
pressure differences move
groundwater
• Groundwater is replenished in
recharge areas
• Groundwater flows back to the
surface in discharge areas
The speed of groundwater flow
 Darcy’s law
• Measuring groundwater movement
– Darcy’s law is a measure of the volume of
water that flows through an aquifer
• Uses the hydraulic gradient, conductivity, and
cross-sectional area
• Hydraulic gradient is the water table slope
(pressure difference)
• Hydraulic conductivity takes into account the
permeability of the aquifer and viscosity of the
liquid to determine how fast water will flow
through a medium
• Higher gradient / conductivity => faster flow rate
 Wells
• A well is a hole bored into the zone of saturation—
significantly below the water table
– Most common methods for removing groundwater
• More than 16 million water wells in the United States
• More than 13 million belong to private households
– Drawdown—As water is withdrawn from the well, the surrounding
water table is lowered
Cone of Depression
• A cone of depression (cone-
shaped depression in the water
table) forms around a well
• Hydraulic gradient increases near
wells with a cone of depression
• Groundwater flows toward the
well, according to the Darcy’s law
• Perched Water Table
– Forms where an aquitard is situated
above the main water table
Perched aquifer
example
Artesian Systems
 Artesian Systems

• An artesian well or spring is a system where groundwater

under pressure rises above the level of the aquifer
• Two conditions must be met to form an artesian system:
– Water must be confined to an inclined aquifer
– Aquitards must exist above and below the aquifer to confine the aquifer
• An aquifer confined by aquitards is called a confined aquifer
Artesian Systems
A Classic Artesian System

Some artesian systems transmit

water a great distance
Example: South Dakota
City Water Systems • Municipal water towers
create artificial artesian
systems
– Tower acts as a recharge area
– Pipes confine the “aquifer”
– Faucets are the flowing
artesian wells
Predict the direction of ground water flow at
points A and B in this two-dimensional model.

A. To the east at both points A and B

B. To the west at both points A and B
C. To the east at point A, to the west at point B
D. To the west at point A, to the east at point B
Groundwater issues Kansas
 Environmental Problems

• Mining Groundwater
– We should be treating groundwater as a nonrenewable
resource
• In many places, the water available to recharge the aquifer is
significantly short of the amount being withdrawn
• Example: High Plains Aquifer
– Underlies 111 million acres
– One of the largest and most agriculturally significant aquifer
– Accounts for 30 percent of all groundwater used for irrigation in the
United States
 Land subsidence

– The ground sinks when

water is pumped from
aquifers faster than
natural recharge
processes can replace it
– Without the
incompressible fluid in
pore spaces, aquifer
materials may compact
 Environmental Problems
• Subsidence
– Particularly pronounced in areas underlain by thick layers of
unconsolidated sediments
• Example: San Joaquin Valley of California
– Subsidence approached 9 m!
• Other examples: Southern Arizona, Las Vegas, New Orleans, Baton Rouge,
Houston and Galveston
• Outside the United States: Mexico City
– Subsided as much as 7 m!
– Entrance to some buildings is now at second floor!
Corcoran clay extent (gray, white outline)
rivers (black lines, dotted where inferred)
 as well as in C or D represent defor-
mation and not atmospheric arti-
Sensing the ups and downs facts of (pairwise
Las Vegas:logic, InSARe.g., revealsMassonnet
structural
and Feigl, 1998). White-yellow-white
control of land subsidence and aquifer-system deformation
wavelike phase signature appears
Falk Amelung Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
only in
Devin L. Galloway U.S. Geological Survey, Sacramento, upper
California 95819, USAleft of C, and thus is
artifact
John W. Bell Nevada Bureau of Mines and Geology, in
University of March
Nevada, 1993
Reno, Nevada 89557,radar
USA
Howard A. Zebker Department of Geophysics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA
image.
Randell J. Laczniak U.S. Geological Survey, Las Vegas, Nevada 89119, USA

ABSTRACT loss of signal coherence in the change

Land subsidence in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, between April 1992 and December ferogram in areas where the radar backs
1997 was measured using spaceborne interferometric synthetic aperture radar. The detailed characteristics have changed, and (2) the in
deformation maps clearly show that the spatial extent of subsidence is controlled by geologic to resolve large displacement gradients b
structures (faults) and sediment composition (clay thickness). The maximum detected subsi- the phase is measured modulo 2π.
dence during the 5.75 yr period is 19 cm. Comparison with leveling data indicates that the sub-
sidence rates declined during the past decade as a result of rising ground-water levels brought RESULTS
about by a net reduction in ground-water extraction. Temporal analysis also detects seasonal An InSAR generated map of subside
subsidence and uplift patterns, which provide information about the elastic and inelastic prop- the Las Vegas Valley between April 199
erties of the aquifer system and their spatial variability. December 1997 (Fig. 1A) delineates two
features, a subsidence bowl in the northwe
INTRODUCTION Borehole extensometer
ground-surface deformation. This technique has a north-northwest–oriented, elongated
. Interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) detected subsidence Land subsidence caused by compaction of been applied previously to investigate earthquakes dence zone in the center80 of the valley
overdrafted aquifer systems is a worldwide prob- (Massonet et al., 1993), volcanoes (Masson et al., northwest subsidence bowl is semicircul
0 Recovery periods
pril 1992 compared with borehole-extensometer measured system com- lem in agricultural and urban areas heavily Ground-water
de- 1995), and land subsidence (Massonet et al., 1997; level
includes the maximum measured subsi
pendent on ground-water supplies (Poland, Fielding et al., 1998; Galloway et al., 1998). Two (190 mm). The southeastern bounda

Depth of water [m]

and water-level changes since 1994. InSAR measured subsidence is aver-

Subsidence [mm]
1984). The overdraft of aquifer systems contain- synthetic aperture radar (SAR) images acquired by aligned along the Quaternary Eglington
10
ing fine-grained silt and clay layers (aquitards) the European Earth Remote-Sensing (ERS) satel- Similarly, the central subsidence zone a
er 10 000 m2. Compaction data are relative and shifted to InSAR measure- results in a vast, one-time releaseInterferogram
of “water of lites with a temporal separation of one year or bounded by several mapped faults.
compaction” from the aquitards. During this typi- more are combined to form a change inter- A comparison between InSAR measure
9 February 1996. InSAR data from Figure 2, C and D, are relative and shifted 20 subsidence
cally slow drainage process, permanent land sub- ferogram. The phase of the signal contains infor- and leveling measurements (Fig. 1B)
sidence occurs primarily due to the irreversible mation about coherent displacements of all scat- general agreement. The larger 90 displac
action measurement of 4 January 1996. White and gray shadings indicate (inelastic) compaction of aquitards. A lesser terers imaged by the radar, and about the gradients measured by leveling may be due
30 of subsidence occurs as recoverable topography. The topographic component is re- different time intervals of the two measure
of water-level decline and recovery. January 1996–December 1997 inter- amount
(elastic) compression of the coarse-grained sand moved using a scaled topography interferogram of A comparison of 1980–1991 leveling dat
m measures 14 mm of vertical displacement and extensometer 12 mm for and gravel deposits (aquifers) and the aquitards. February 8–9, 1996 (three- or four-pass method, three interferograms (Fig. 1C) indicates th
These40processesfrom Fig. 2,byAthe
are described and B
aquitard- Zebker et al., 1994a); the scaling factor is derived rate of subsidence has been decreasing
riod. Exact match is not expected because interferogram measures total drainage model (Terzaghi, 1925; Tolman and from the Delft orbits (Scharro et al., 1998). One 1992. Along a 0.5 km section of line 1, the
Poland, 1940; Holzer, 1984). cycle of phase (1 fringe) represents 28 mm of radar differential subsidence across the Eglingto
nce whereas extensometer measures compaction of uppermost 245 m of 50Vegas (Spanish for “the meadows”), line-of-sight (range) displacement, Extensometer
Las and 31 mm of was 15 mm/yr during 1996–1997, compa
Nevada, United States, was once from Fig.
a lush 2, Cvertical
desert and D ground displacement. In compaction
this study we 20 mm/yr during 1992–1993 100
and 50 mm/y
Close agreement between two methods suggests that minimal com- oasis where water flowed from springs of an assume that all deformation is vertical. ing 1980–1982.
artesian (confined) aquifer-system. Ground water A typical accuracy for a phase measurement is Four differential interferograms for di
occurs beneath base of extensometer. is currently pumped at1993
a rate two to three1994 1995 of a cycle
times about one-fifteenth 1996 (averaging 201997 1998April 1992 and Dec
time periods between
more than the natural recharge, and constitutes pixels, e.g., Zebker et al., 1994b), or 1.6 mm 1997 (Fig. 2) reveal spatial detail about th
Time
about 25% of the present water supply; the range displacement. The accuracy of relative poral variation of subsidence. In the nor
remainder is imported from the Colorado River. deformation measurements is generally a factor subsidence bowl, the general pattern o
Persistent overdraft of the aquifer system since of two to five times smaller than the accuracy of placement is repeated throughout the 5
about 1950 (Mindling, 1971) lowered water phase measurements, because of signal delays period, but the rate of displacement dec
Figure 4.Water-level change (A) from
levels throughout the Las Vegas Valley, in some due to lateral variations in atmospheric water with time. The northwest subsidence bowl
places in excess of 90 m (Wood, 1999). In re- vapor (Hanssen et al., 1999). The arid climate of about 70 mm of range displacement (2.5 fr
predevelopment to 1990 (Wood,
sponse, parts of the valley have subsided more Las Vegas reduces atmospheric effects. Com- in the April 1992–November 1993 interfer
than 2 m since 1935 (Maxey and Jameson, 1948; parison with a U.S. Geological Survey digital (Fig. 2A), but only 40 mm (1.5 fringes)
 Saltwater Contamination
– Excessive groundwater withdrawal causes saltwater to be
drawn into wells, thus contaminating the freshwater supply
 Comparing
Two Aquifers

• Extremely permeable aquifers

(coarse gravel) have such large
openings that groundwater may
travel long distances without
being cleaned

• Sewage often becomes purified

as it passes through a few
dozen meters of an aquifer
composed of sand or
permeable sandstone
 Changing Direction

– Sinking a well can lead to groundwater pollution problems

– Other sources and types of contamination include highway
salt, fertilizers, pesticides, chemicals, and industrial materials
The Geologic Work of Groundwater
• Groundwater Dissolves Rock
– Most groundwater is often mildly acidic
• Contains weak carbonic acid
– Forms when rainwater dissolves carbon dioxide from the air and from
decaying plants
– Carbonic acid reacts with calcite in limestone to form
calcium bicarbonate, a soluble material that can be carried
away in solution as dissolved load
 The Geologic Work of Groundwater
• Caverns
– The most spectacular results of erosion by groundwater
– Most caverns are created by acidic groundwater dissolving soluble rock

– Cavern development
• Developed as acidic groundwater
dissolves limestone bedrock
• Development (erosion) at or just
below the zone of saturation

Mammoth Cave
Cave Decorations
– How dripstone forms
• Calcium carbonate deposited as dripping
water evaporates is called travertine
– Dripstone features—speleothems
• Speleothem is the general name for all
dripstone features
– Includes stalactites (hanging from the
ceiling) and stalagmites (form on the floor
of a cavern)
– These may join together to form a column
– Karst topography is a landscape that has been shaped mainly by the dissolving
power of groundwater
– Involves soluble rocks such as limestone, dolomite, and gypsum

• Irregular terrain

• Sinkholes or sinks
(formed by groundwater
slowly dissolving the
bedrock often
accompanied by collapse)

• Striking lack of surface

drainage (streams)
Development of a
Karst Landscape
Sinkholes in Karst regions
atural

se of the
occurring
water, which
e nightmare
uptly and
eep below
nkholes also
te where the
collapse of
s, because
ur slowly or

Photos (clockwise): On Wings of Care, USGS, USGS, National Cave/Karst Research Institute
S
The Bayou Corne sinkhole was created from a collapsed underground
salt dome cavern operated by Texas Brine Company August 3, 2012,
and 350 nearby residents were advised to evacuate.
Karst terrain
Tower Karst Tower karst: forms where thick limestone is highly
fractured and jointed, groundwater dissolves along
these fractures and leaves behind residual towers

Guilin, southwestern China

Li River, Guilin, southwestern China
 How does most groundwater move in the subsurface?

a) In underground rivers
b) Through caves and tunnels in rock
c) Through interconnected small openings
d) Through sink holes and fault zone

Groundwater can move through any of the choices but most of the groundwater
travels through interconnected pore spaces and small fractures in the rock.
Why does much of Florida have problems with sinkholes?

a) It has a lot of plants that produce carbon dioxide.

b) It is wet and has a lot of limestone.
c) It is dry and has a lot of limestone.
d) It has plants that produce carbonic acid and it is dry.
e) It has abundant fresh water to dissolve acid.

Carbonic acid, groundwater, and limestone are the major

requirements for developing sinkholes. Florida has all of those.
 What caused the main cathedral in Mexico City to
subside and lean to one side?

a) Increased pressure from the overlying buildings caused the

groundwater to flow away from the city
b) A severe drought in the 1950’s permanently lowered the water table
c) Drilling many wells to provide water for the city lowered the water table
d) Draining the lake that the city was built on left too little groundwater in
the area to support the cathedral

The main cause of the subsidence was the drilling of too many
wells to withdraw water from the ground below the cathedral.
 Which of the following geologic materials would have the
highest groundwater velocities and be least effective in
removing unwanted pollutants from the water?

a) Unconsolidated medium-grained sand: coated with clay minerals

b) Sandstone: well-cemented with a few widely spaced vertical fractures
c) Lakebeds: unconsolidated very fine-grained sand and silt
d) Limestone: numerous solution channels and fractures widened by
dissolution

Limestone is the rock that tends to dissolve forming large openings

and caverns so it does little to slow the flow of water through it.
In-Class Exercise: Groundwater

Which of rock types shown on the cross-

section would you expect to have the lowest
permeability?

Which well(s) are most likely to be

contaminated by the septic tank? Why?

Which well(s) are most likely NOT to be

contaminated by the septic tank? Why?

Which well produces water with high levels

of dissolved carbonate? Why?

Why is the water level in Well C higher than

the other two wells?
 In-Class Exercise:

Which of rock types shown on the cross-section Why do wells #2 and #3 have different water levels?
would you expect to have the lowest permeability?

Which well would you expect to produce water If there is a chemical spill in El Hadjar at the surface,
with the highest carbonate concentrations? which well(s) is/are likely to be contaminated quickly?