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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]
The Ogallala Aquifer was formed more than 25,000 years ago, but it recharges at a very low rate. For years, irrigators in Kansas have drained more from the aquifer than rainfall can replace.
The top of the Ogallala is defined by a thick cap rock of hard limestone or caliche, broadly called "algal limestone". Patterns of thin lines in the "limestone" suggested algal origin to frontier geologists (calcite and silica deposited within mats of algae under a shallow lake). However, the material is determined to be mostly caliche that ...
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.
The Ogallala aquifer is the principal source of water for agriculture in western Kansas. It’s not an underground lake as some believe but saturated sediments that have been deposited over the ...
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The Ogallala aquifer, or the High Plains aquifer, is an integral fresh water source for the entirety of the Great Plains region, providing drinking water to 80% of the population and irrigating 13 million acres of land. Precipitation, seasonal lakes, and prehistoric water reserves serve as sources of water for the aquifer, which lies beneath ...
In Oklahoma, groundwater users in the Ogallala Aquifer are limited to 2 feet of water per acre each year, which is around 650,000 gallons. (Each “acre-foot” refers to the amount of water it ...