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Schematic of an aquifer showing confined zones, groundwater travel times, a spring and a well. An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing material, consisting of permeable or fractured rock, or of unconsolidated materials (gravel, sand, or silt). Aquifers vary greatly in their characteristics.
This is an accepted version of this page This is the latest accepted revision, reviewed on 19 February 2025. Water located beneath the ground surface An illustration showing groundwater in aquifers (in blue) (1, 5 and 6) below the water table (4), and three different wells (7, 8 and 9) dug to reach it. Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in ...
Aquifers of the United States Withdrawal rates from the Ogallala Aquifer.. This is a list of some aquifers in the United States.. Map of major US aquifers by rock type. An aquifer is a geologic formation, a group of formations, or a part of a formation that contains sufficient saturated permeable material to yield significant quantities of water to groundwater wells and springs.
Over thousands of years, water dripped below the surface creating an underground water deposit called the Ogallala Aquifer. The water — which spans from South Dakota to Texas and was once the ...
The slope of the water table is known as the “hydraulic gradient”, which depends on the rate at which water is added to and removed from the aquifer and the permeability of the material. The water table does not always mimic the topography due to variations in the underlying geological structure (e.g., folded, faulted, fractured bedrock).
The Ogallala Aquifer (oh-gə-LAH-lə) is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States. As one of the world's largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately 174,000 sq mi (450,000 km 2) in portions of eight states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas). [1]
Recharge is the primary method through which water enters an aquifer. This process usually occurs in the vadose zone below plant roots and is often expressed as a flux to the water table surface. Groundwater recharge also encompasses water moving away from the water table farther into the saturated zone. [1]
Diagram of a water well partially filled to level z with the top of the aquifer at z T. For a well with impermeable walls, the water in the well is resupplied from the bottom of the well. The rate at which water flows into the well will depend on the pressure difference between the ground water at the well bottom and the well water at the well ...