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At least 1,261 records · Page 70Linked to original sources
USGS1971

Ground water for irrigation in the Brooten-Belgrade area, west-central Minnesota

Water for irrigation is needed to improve crop yields from sandy soils in the Brooten-Belgrade area. Ground-water supplies of sufficient quantity and suitable quality for irrigation are available in much of the area. Quaternary glacial drift, as much as 300 feet thick, is underlain by Precambrian crystalline rocks and possibly by Cretaceous sedimentary rocks. Sand and gravel aquifers are buried at various depths in the drift and can be located by test drilling. One buried aquifer, possibly capable of high yields, is within 250 feet of the land surface in the vicinity of Belgrade. Glacial outwash comprises the upper part of the drift in most of the project area and is locally more than 100 feet thick. The outwash is made up of crossbedded sand and gravel that is interbedded in places with silt and clay deposits and has a saturated thickness of as much as 65 feet. Locally, the transmissivity of the surficial aquifer is as much as 60,000 gallons per day per foot, but elsewhere is generally less than 30,000 gallons per day per foot. The aquifer should yield more than 300 gallons per minute and locally more than 1,000 gallons per minute to individual wells in much of the northern and southwestern parts of the area. Recharge to the surficial aquifer is almost entirely from precipitation. Significant ground-water losses occur as base flow and underflow, and through evaporation and transpiration. Water in the buried and surficial aquifers is of the calcium magnesium bicarbonate type and is of suitable quality for irrigation. An analog model, simulating yearly 30-day pumping periods and hypothetical volumes and distributions of withdrawals, showed the effects on the surficial aquifer of withdrawals of about 20,000 acre-feet per pumping season for 20 years. Predicted water-level declines caused by withdrawals of 20,000 acre-feet per pumping season were generally less than 5 feet in the surficial aquifer and years Predicted water-level declines caused by withdrawals of 20,000 acre-feet pumping season caused predicted water-table declines of more than 10 feet in large parts of the area and caused lake-level declines of as much as 8 feet. The model indicated that water removed from aquifer and lake storage accounted for less than 50 percent of all withdrawals; the remainder was accounted for by water recovered from stream base flow and by water diverted from evaporation and transpiration.

Minnesota↗
USGS1971

Water resources of the Big Black River basin, Mississippi

Abundant supplies of water of good quality are available in the Big Black River basin from either ground-water or surface-water sources. For 90 percent of the time flow in the lower part of the Big Black River below Pickens is not less than 85 cfs (cubic feet per second), and low flows of more than 5 cfs are available in five of the eastern tributary streams in the upper half of the basin. Chemical quality of water in the streams is excellent, except for impairment caused by pollution at several places. The Big Black River basin is underlain by several thousand feet of clay, silt, sand, gravel, and limestone. This sedimentary material is mostly loose to semiconsolidated and is stratified. The beds dip to the southwest at the rate of 20 to 50 feet per mile. The Big Black River flows southwestward but at a lower gradient; therefore, any specific formation is at a greater depth below the river the farther one goes down stream. The formations crop out in northwest-southeast trending belts. Most of the available ground water is contained in six geologic units; thickness of these individual units ranges from 100 to 1,000 feet. The aquifers overlap to the extent that a well drilled to the base of fresh water will, in most places, penetrate two or more aquifers. Well depths range from less than 10 to 2,400 feet. Water suitable for most needs can be obtained from the aquifers available at most localities. Dissolved-solids content of water within an aquifer increases down the dip. Also, generally the deeper a well is the higher will be the dissolved-solids content of the water. Shallow ground water (less than 200 ft deep) in the basin usually contains about 100 mg/l (milligrams per liter) of dissolved solids. Most water in the basin from more than 2,500 feet below land surface contains m ore than 1,000 mg/l of dissolved solids. In several areas fresh water is deeper than 2,500 feet, but near the mouth of the Big Black River brackish water is only about 300 feet below land surface. Practically all water pumped for man's use in the basin is from the ground (about 11 million gallons per day); however, a small amount of surface water is used for supplemental irrigation of row crops. Wells producing 500 to 1,000 gpm (gallons per minute) are not unusual in the basin. Most of the area is underlain by one or more aquifers from which a properly constructed well could produce as much as 2,000 gpm. All the towns in the area have sufficient ground water available to at least double or triple their ground-water pumpage.

Water Supply Paper↗
USGS1970

Streamflow from the United States into the Atlantic Ocean during 1931-1960

Streamflow from the United States into the Atlantic Ocean, between the international stream St. Croix River, inclusive, and Cape Sable, Fla., averaged about 355,000 cfs (cubic feet per second) during the 30-year period 1931-60, or roughly 20 percent of the water that, on the average flows out of the conterminous United States. The area drained by streams flowing into the Atlantic Ocean is about 288,000 square miles, including the Canadian part of the St. Croix and Connecticut River basins, or a little less than 10 percent of the area of the conterminous United States. Hence, the average streamflow into the Atlantic Ocean, in terms of cubic feet per second per square mile, is about twice the national average of the flow that leaves the conterminous United States. Flow from about three-fourths of the area draining into the Atlantic Ocean is gaged at streamflow measuring stations of the U.S. Geological Survey. The remaining one-fourth of the drainage area consists mostly of low-lying coastal areas from which the flow was estimated, largely on the basis of nearby gaging stations. Streamflow, in terms of cubic feet per second per square mile, decreases rather progressively from north to south. It averages nearly 2 cfs along the Maine coast, about 1 cfs along the North Carolina coast, and about 0.9 cfs along the Florida coast.

Water Supply Paper↗
USGS1971

Ground water for irrigation near Lake Emily, Pope County, west-central Minnesota

In the Lake Emily area, thickness of the glacial drift ranges from about 200 feet to more than 400 feet. Within the drift are sand and gravel aquifers, some of which can yield adequate water supplies for irrigation. Outwash, as much as 60 feet thick, lies at the surface. The outwash has saturated thicknesses of more than 40 feet and transmissivities of more than 50,000 gallons per day per foot locally in the northern and western parts of the area. In the places of large saturated thickness and high hydraulic conductivity, the aquifer should yield more than 600 gallons per minute to wells. Theoretical maximum yields to wells in most of the area are more than 100 gallons per minute. Chemically, water in the buried and surficial aquifers is mainly of a calcium magnesium bicarbonate type and is suitable for irrigation. Calculated and estimated sodium adsorption ratios and salinity and boron concentrations are below the limits recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Minnesota↗
USGS1972

Geohydrologic summary of the Pearl River basin, Mississippi and Louisiana

Fresh water in abundance is contained in large artesian reservoirs in sand and gravel deposits of Tertiary and Quaternary ages in the Pearl River basin, a watershed of 8,760 square miles. Shallow, water-table reservoirs occur in Quarternary deposits (Pleistocene and Holocene) that blanket most of the uplands in .the southern half of the basin and that are present in smaller upland areas and along streams elsewhere. The shallow reservoirs contribute substantially to dry-weather flow of the Strong River and Bogue Chitto and of Holiday, Lower Little, Silver, and Whitesand Creeks, among others. About 3 billion acre-feet of ground water is in storage in the fresh-water section, which extends from the surface to depths ranging from about sea level in the extreme northern part of the basin to more than 3,000 feet below sea level in the southern part of the basin. Variations in low flow for different parts of the river basin are closely related to geologic terrane and occurrence of ground water. The upland terrace belt that crosses the south-central part of the basin is underlain by permeable sand and gravel deposits and yields more than 0.20 cubic feet per second per square mile of drainage area to streamflow, whereas the northern part of the basin, underlain by clay, marl, and fine to medium sand, yields less than 0.05 cubic feet per second per square mile of drainage area (based on 7-day Q2 minimum flow computed from records). Overall, the potential surface-water supplies are large. Because water is available at shallow depths, most of the deeper aquifers have not been developed anywhere in the basin. At many places in the south, seven or more aquifers could be developed either by tapping one sand in each well or by screening two or more sands in a single well. Well fields each capable, of producing several million gallons of water a day are feasible nearly anywhere in the Pearl River basin. Water in nearly all the aquifers is of good to excellent quality and requires little or no treatment for most uses. The water is a soft, sodium bicarbonate type and therefore has a low to moderate dissolved-solids content. Mineral content increases generally downdip in an aquifer. Excessive iron, common in shallow aquifers, is objectionable for some water uses. Water from the streams, except in salty tidal reaches, is less mineralized than ground water; in 10 sites the median dissolved-solids content in streamflow was 50 milligrams per liter or less. Moderately intensive ground-water development has been made in the Bogalusa area, Louisiana; at the Mississippi Test Facility, Hancock County, Miss. ; and in the Jackson area, Mississippi. Wells with pumping rates of 500 to 1,000 gallons per minute each are common throughout the Pearl River basin, and some deep wells flow more than 3,000 gallons per minute in the coastal lowland areas. Probably 20 million gallons per day of artesian water flows uncontrolled from wells in the southern part of the basin. Ground-water levels, except in the higher altitudes, are within 60 feet of the surface, and flowing wells are common in the valleys and in the coastal Pine Meadows. Decline of water level is a problem in only a few small areas. Saline water as a resource is available for development from aquifers and streams near the coast and from aquifers at considerable depth in most of the Pearl River basin. Pollution is a problem in oil fields and in reaches of some streams below sewage and other waste-disposal points. The basin estuary contains water of variable quality but has potential for certain water-use developments that will require special planning and management.

Water Supply Paper↗