trendsingroundwaterconditions-centerforresearchin（10页）.docVIP

Trends in Groundwater Conditions in the Ogallala Aquifer Patrick Frasier Dr. David Maidment GIS in Water Resources CE 394K Introduction As the global population increases there has been a growing concern regarding the earth’s finite resources. Water has become a hot topic for America’s future. One resource of primary concern is that of the Ogallala Aquifer. The Ogallala covers parts of eight states, from South Dakota to Texas and covers 174,000 square miles. The Texas panhandle relies on the 36,080 square miles found in the High Plains. According to estimates, 417 million ac-ft of storage is in Texas (Jensen, 2004). This is like saying Lake Erie of the Great Lakes is buried underneath the Texas Panhandle (EPA, 2006) Figure 1: Map of the Ogallala Many people fear for the future of the aquifer and there is reason for concern. According to a study done by the North Plains Water District in Texas, the aquifer levels are decreasing at a rate of 1.74 feet per year or 1,082,631 acre ft (NPWD). This decrease is of great concern because crops irrigated by the aquifer represent 65 percent of all the irrigated acreage in the nation (Jensen, 2004). Farmers are being forced to turn to new technologies but it is still possible that the aquifer may dry up in as little as 25 years (BBC, 2007) Objective The purpose of this study is to evaluate water level changes in the Ogallala Aquifer in the Texas High Plains in order to determine the areas of greatest depletion, the cause of depletion, and predict the remaining life of the aquifer. Methods There were two main processes in this project. The first main process involved using ArcGIS to determine water level change across Lubbock County. ArcHydro Groundwater (AHGW) was used to evaluate the water levels in 1990 and 2005. The end result of using AHGW was two rasters that represented the surface of the water levels from mean sea level. Raster math was used to take the difference between the two years so that changes