GEOS 4430 Lecture Notes:

Introduction to Hydrogeology
Dr. T. Brikowski

Fall 2012

file:introduction.tex,v (v. 1.43), printed August 28, 2012

 Introduction

See NBC Thirsty Planet series, e.g.

American West

1
 Why Study Hydrogeology?
Population growth and global warming will lead to severe
freshwater shortages in the near future.

U.S.
West: Emphasis on groundwater.
Water is a crucial problem west of 100o W longitude [the
east side of the Texas panhandle, J. W. Powell, 1875,
quoted in Stegner, 1954].
average U.S. precipitation shows distinct drop-off west
of 100o (Fig. 1)
Situation best summarized by Mark Twain (apocryphal):
[In the West] whiskey is for drinking, water is for
fighting over . . . 1
1
http://www.twainquotes.com/WaterWhiskey.html
2
 East: emphasis on surface water management (rivers,
lakes, etc.) and drainage, contamination remediation, and
sea water intrusion. Also seawater intrusion.

World:
world wide water stress (pg. 61) increasing rapidly, causing
much suffering and potential war. See also decadal
summary
Upper-vs-lower basin water usage
similar to western U.S.Colorado River (p. 33) issues. See
also USBR Colo. R. sustainability study
Euphrates River (Fig. 3): Turkey vs. Syria and Iraq.
Drying of Iraq marshes.
Nile River basin (Fig. 4). Egypt vs. Sudan and Ethiopia.
See Nile Basin Initiative
3
 Declining snowpack: primarily Himalaya, which supplies
much of India and south Asia (Fig. 5)

4
 U.S. Precipitation 2009

Figure 1: Total precipitation, U.S., 2003. Note large dropoff

west of the Texas panhandle. After NOAA.

5
 World Freshwater Stress

Figure 2: Observed and projected world freshwater stress (fraction

produced vs. available). After UNEP, updated at World Economic Forum
2009.
6
 Euphrates River Basin

Figure 3: Euphrates river basin. After WorthNews. See also

satellite photos, NPR 2009 of Ataturk Reservoir, Turkey.

7
 Nile River Basin

Figure 4: Nile river basin elevation and hydrology. After

WaterWatch.
8
 Himalayan Snowpack Decline

Figure 5: Changes in extent of glaciers in the Western Himalaya

[Fig. 1, Prasad and Singh, 2007]. See more immediate problem
in Peru.
9
 Texas 2011 Drought

worst single-year drought in Texas history

Drought Monitor, also seasonal drought outlook

severe impacts, e.g. Amarillo water supply, Lake Meredith

currently empty (official dead pool elev is 2850 ft, 2011
record low of 2842.5 ft, depth 28.5 ft)

North Dallas (NTWMD) in persistent Stage II water

restrictions

very unusual conditions (see TX State Climatologist blog,

continues trend of high-T departure from historical trends
10
 U.S. Trouble Spots

Western Colorado River

about 35 million people depend on this river for drinking
water
since 2002 demand has exceeded supply by 10% (see Fig.
1, USBR Basin Status Report
11 year drought has greatly depleted storage in the system
(e.g. Lake Mead, Fig. 6)
fortunately, per-capita water use has declined significantly
(Figs. 6-7) in that basin, meaning conservation can help a
lot

11
 Climate Change and Drought
see Global Change Impacts in the United States, [USGCRP,
2009]

Warming predictions:
U.S. average temperature has risen by 1.1C in the past
50 years
expect additional 5-6C warming by 2100 at current CO2
emissions rates [p. 29, USGCRP, 2009]
greatest warming in mid-continent, especially west (
[Colorado River headwaters, p. 29 USGCRP, 2009]
(compare to 1940-2005 observed trends
optimistic models of reduced emissions predict 3-4C
warming
12
 will result in over half the year with days warmer than
90F by 2100 in North Texas [p. 34, USGCRP, 2009]
around 120 days over 100F for North Texas by 2100 [p.
90, USGCRP, 2009]

only mild changes in precipitation predicted [p. 30-31,

USGCRP, 2009]

warming will lead to increased evapotranspiration by plants,

leading to significant water stress in part of U.S. and mid-
latitudes worldwide (Fig. 8)

Get ready for a wild ride! E.g. Australian example

12 year drought began around 2000, part of a general
southern hemisphere drought
13
 forced steep decline in rice production, leading to global
shortages and conversion to wind production
some reservoirs dropped to 12% of normal (compare to
Lake Lavon, where at 35% of normal Stage 4 Emergency
restrictions apply, no outdoor use of water)
drought ended 2010 with heavy rains, reservoirs rising, now
at 35% of capacity
Australian electorate now becoming quite serious about
climate change
drought has resumed along west coast (Perth)

14
 Lake Mead, NV
Lake Mead, NV Monthly Water Elevation
1240
Maximum

1220

1200

Water Elevation (ft) 1180 Average

1160

1140
Drought
1120

1100

Critical Shortage
1080

1060
1940

1945

1950

1955

1960

1965

1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2005

2010
Figure 6: Lake Mead, NV monthly water levels 1937-present. Current levels approaching those experienced in shorter

severe droughts 1955 and 1965. Mandatory rationing below shortage line, AZ handles 94% of the rationing, NV the rest. Mead

supplies 90% of LV water.

15
 Las Vegas City Water Intake Tunnel

Figure 7: Las Vegas-Lake Mead water intake tunnel plan. One of two current intakes is at 1,050 ft elev, and may soon

be above water. From TunnelTalk.

16
 Warming-Related Water Stress

Figure 8: Warming will greatly affect water availability by 2100; IPCC4

[2007] lower emissions scenario (SRESa1b) mean results.

17
 Unique U.S. Water Stresses

hydrofracing uses considerable water

2012 drought is bringing pressure to recycle that water or

halt this use

others such as beverage industries have recognized that water

access is their most persistent future business risk factor

i.e. hydrology is important even to oil and other geologists

18
Water Trends

19
 Water Sources
average water usage in U.S. is 30% groundwater (Fig. 9)

U.S. water usage trends:

Consumptive water use up steadily
ratio of groundwater to surface water also generally
up, partly due to climate (recent droughts increased
groundwater extraction)
since 1980 water use down slightly, but
ground/surface water ratio increasing (Fig. 9)

U.S. Climate trends

long term climate predictions are for significant heating,
little precipitation change
20
 historical trends show notable warming in the West (1

F /decade) since 1970, and increase in precipitation

21
 Total Water Usage in the U.S., 1950-2005

Figure 9: Total water usage by source in the U.S., 1950-2005.

Groundwater use is steadily increasing, total and surface water
use has leveled off. See USGS, and [Hutson et al., 2004].
22
 U.S. Water Usage by Category, 1950-2005

Figure 10: Total water usage by category in the U.S., 1950-2005.

Approximately 30% of thermoelectric water was saline (TDS above drinking
water standard of 1000 mg/l), 2.5% of the thermoelectric total was
consumptive use (not returned to surface or groundwater streams).
23
 Water Usage

average groundwater usage in western U.S. is much higher

average groundwater usage in Texas 60%, and generally

increasing with time (Fig. 11)

largest users in west are agricultural irrigation, but this is

declining, partly in favor of municipal use (Fig. 12)

94% of NTX use is surface water. Current status of N. Texas

reservoirs or NOAA

24
Sources of Consumed Water, Texas, 1974-1993

Figure 11: Sources of consumed water, Texas, 1974-1993.

Texas Water Resources Planning Commision.
25
 TX Water Use Categories 1974, 1993 & 2008

Figure 12: Water usage categories, Texas, 1974 (left), 1993 (middle) and
2008 (right). Municipal usage (blue in right two figures, green on left) has
grown from 12% in 1974 to 22% in 1993 to 25% in 2002. Concomitantly
irrigation usage has declined from 78% to 68% to 62% respectively. Texas
Water Resources Planning Commission and TWDB.

26
 Projected Water Usage by Category, Texas

Figure 13: Projected water usage by categories, Texas. From

Texas Water Plan 2002. Municipal usage will increase more
rapidly than decrease in irrigation.
27
 City Water Usage, Texas, 2006
Per-Capita Water Use 2006
280

260

240

220

Gallons/Capita/Day (GPCD)
200

180

160

140

120

100

Tucson, AZ

HOUSTON
RICHARDSON

AUSTIN

EL PASO
FORT WORTH
PLANO

AMARILLO

WACO

SAN ANTONIO
Las Vegas, NV

DALLAS
MIDLAND

Figure 14: 2006 Estimated water usage for Texas cities with population
greater than 95,000. Richardson has the greatest usage, nearly double that
of San Antonio, and higher than Las Vegas. Data from TWDB, see also
Texas Comptroller.
28
 Projected Groundwater Supply, Texas

Figure 15: Projected groundwater availability, Texas major

aquifers. From Texas Water Plan 2002. See aquifer map for
locations.
29
 High Plains Aquifer Lifetime
DALLAM HANSFORD OCHILTREE LIPSCOMB
SHERMAN

C anadian R
ive
r
HARTLEY MOORE HUTCHINSON ROBERTS HEMPHILL

OLDHAM CARSON GRAY WHEELER

New Mexico
POTTER

Oklahoma
Te x a s
Te x a s
40 Amarillo

DEAF DONLEY
SMITH RANDALL ARMSTRONG
Pr
27 ai
ri
D

e
o g To w n
F ork Red River
CASTRO SWISHER BRISCOE
PARMER

BAILEY LAMB HALE FLOYD MOTLEY

r
ve
COCHRAN HOCKLEY LUBBOCK CROSBY DICKENS Ri
os
Lubbock az
B

r
YOAKUM TERRY LYNN GARZA Estimated Usable
Aquifer Lifetime
Already Below 30 feet Perennial Stream
Less than 15 years Interstate
16 to 30 years Major Road
31 to 50 years County Boundary

GAINES DAWSON BORDEN 51 to 75 years Ogallala Aquifer Extent

76 to 100 years Outside of Texas
Greater than 100 years Land Surface Over
the Ogallala Aquifer
No Saturated Thickness Change
in West Texas
between 1990 and 2004
Water Table Rising
0 5 10 20 30 40 50

Miles

ANDREWS MARTIN HOWARD

Co
lo
ad

r
o
Midland R
iv
er
Odessa MIDLAND GLASSCOCK
ECTOR

20

Figure 16: Projections for usable lifetime of Ogallalla Aquifer,

Texas Panhandle. From TTU.
30
 India Groundwater Declines

Figure 17: India annual pumping as fraction of recharge. From

NASA.
31
 California Snowpack Reduction

Figure 18: Projected climate-change-related changes to California

snowpack. From Climate Change and Water Resources Factsheet. Lake
Lavon can hold 275,000 acre-ft of water. See 2007-2009 summary , note
2008 La Ni
na event. Also interactive prediction maps.
32
 What Hydrologists Do
primarily addressed water supply issues until 1970s (i.e.
finding water)

emphasis on contamination issues since creation of EPA

requires a much more quantitative approach
typically involving governmental regulations and/or lawyers
current emphasis on doing nothing: finding and
preserving uncontaminated water supplies, establishing
natural attenuation as the typical remediation approach
also Brownfields (development of contaminated properties,
e.g. American Airlines Center)

now returning to water supply issues given the problems of

drought, global warming and full allocation of resources
33
 see also USGS Hydrology Primer (last updated 2010)

34
Definitions

35
 Definitions

Ground Water: two overlapping definitions

subsurface water that occurs beneath the water table in
porous geologic formations that are fully saturated
that portion of subsurface water that can be collected with
wells, drainage pipes etc., or that flow naturally to the
surface via springs and seeps (NOTE: not all subsurface
water is groundwater)
important to remember there is accessible and inaccessible
water in the subsurface

36
 Definitions (cont.)
Ground Water Hydrology: the study of the origin,
distribution, movement and physical/chemical properties of
ground water. A subset of hydrology, the study of all
terrestrial waters.

Surface Water Hydrology: the study of subaerial waters

(in contact with the atmosphere), excluding oceans. Civil
engineers usually mean lakes and bays, geologists usually
mean rivers and streams when using this term.

Hydrogeology: emphasizes the hydrologic aspects of geology,

e.g. lithologic or facies influences on groundwater movement

Geohydrology: emphasizing geologic aspects of hydrology,

37
 particularly the effects of the porous medium through which
groundwater flows.

in principle Hydrogeology and Geohydrology have different

meanings, in common usage they are identical

Hydrosphere: that region of the Earth occupied by water,

including lakes, rivers, oceans, subsurface water, glaciers,
+/- atmospheric water (clouds, vapor, precipitation)

38
The Hydrologic Cycle

39
 Definitions: Hydrologic Cycle

the hydrologic cycle refers to the global chemical balance of

H2O in the hydrosphere (Fig. 19)

start with Precipitation - form is important, e.g. in Nevada

snow is generally biggest contributor to groundwater

some part of precipitation onto the ground becomes surface

runoff or overland flow

the rest is infiltration: driven by gravity and pressure,

Ppore Patmosphere

much infiltrated water goes back out to the atmosphere by

40
 evaporation or transpiration (uptake by plants and release
to atmosphere)

infiltration that makes it to the water table becomes

groundwater, and is termed recharge

while infiltrated water is above the water table, it forms an

unsaturated (or vadose) zone where pores are filled with a
mixture of air and water. Pore pressure is negative in this
zone.

groundwater in the saturated zone is found in aquifers (rocks

through which water travels most easily). These are generally
separated by aquitards (water travels slowly through these)
or aquicludes (impermeable zones or layers)
41
 within the aquifer, water occupies the accessible pore space in
the rock (some pores may be blocked off, or permanently
occupied by something else. The accessible space is referred
to as the effective porosity

groundwater that discharges into a stream is termed baseflow

(total flow in the stream is runoff)

42
 Quantified Hydrologic Cycle

Figure 19: An illustration of the hydrologic cycle. After online

textbook. See flux estimates (p. 5) for water balance.

43
 Water Balance

much of hydrology is based on determining the water balance

for all or some part of the hydrosphere (e.g. a groundwater
basin)

water balance is just a mass balance:

     
rate of rate of change in
=
mass in mass out content

44
 Groundwater Basics

Some good online resources are now

available to provide overviews of hydrology.
My current favorite is the USGS Basic ground-
water hydrology publication [Heath, 1987].
The classic textbook Freeze and Cherry [1979]
is now quite old, but is one of the few calculus-
based geologic hydrology texts (much more
readable than civil engineering texts).

45
 Aquifer Types

See also Fig. 20:

confining layer (aquiclude): low-permeability bed or unit

confined aquifer: an aquifer overlain by a confining layer

unconfined aquifer (phreatic or water table): water table lies

below the top of the aquifer

semi-confined: an aquifer exhibiting confined and unconfined

behavior at different locations (e.g. a sand layer in an alluvial
fan)
46
 artesian: can simply mean confined, in common usage it
means an aquifer from which water will flow upward to the
surface given an appropriate conduit (e.g. a borehole)

perched: a saturated zone lying above unsaturated rock

47
 Aquifer Features

Figure 20: Important features of groundwater systems,

including aquifer/aquitard, water table, etc. After Heath
[1987].
48
 Water Table Definitions

the undulating plane below the ground surface at which pore

water pressure is equal to atmospheric

also the dividing line between the unsaturated and saturated

zones

Phreatic surface: the level to which water will rise in a well

open only within the aquifer
different than the water table only for confined aquifers
when phreatic surface lies at or above the ground surface,
an artesian well or spring is possible
49
Motivating Examples

50
 Southwest Drought 1998-2010

12-year drought (as of 2010) longest in historical record

[Overpeck and Udall, 2010]

consistent with pre-historic extreme droughts [USGCRP,

2009, p. 130]

longer and more frequent droughts predicted by climate

change models, would reduce supply to less than current
demand within the decade [Barnett and Pierce, 2008]

i.e. permanent water shortage in most of the Southwest

51
 Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone
The most severe nutrient pollution issue in U.S. is Gulf Coast
Dead Zone, with Chesapeake Bay a close second.

high nutrient loads in Mississippi River discharge lead to large

algal blooms [CENR, 2000, p. 13]

seasonal stratification leads to hypoxia zone, killing marine

life, e.g. Baltic Sea image

see summary of nutrient source spatial and temporal

distribution [CENR, 2000, p. 27, 29], also USGS streamflow
& nutrient delivery to Gulf of Mexico

see LSU Current Status webpage

52
 expanding steadily with time (2010 is largest ever measured,
area the size of New Jersey)

53
Other Resources

54
 Useful Links
This is intended to be an ever-evolving list of useful links on
the general topic of this note set.

groundwater extraction is 40% of sea level rise [Pokhrel et al.,

2012]

55
Bibliography

56
Tim P. Barnett and David W. Pierce. When will Lake Mead go dry? Water Resour. Res., 44
(W03201), 29 March 2008. doi: 10.1029/2007WR006704. URL http://www.agu.org/
journals/pip/wr/2007WR006704-pip.pdf.

CENR. Integrated Assessment of Hypoxia in the Northern Gulf of Mexico. Report, National
Science and Technology Council Committee on Environment and Natural Resources,
Washington, D.C., May 2000. URL http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/products/hypox_
finalfront.pdf.

R. A. Freeze and J. A. Cherry. Groundwater. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979.

R. C. Heath. Basic ground-water hydrology. Water Supply Paper 2220, U.S. Geol. Survey,
Denver, CO, 1987. URL http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/wsp/wsp2220/.

S. S. Hutson, N. L. Barber, J. F. Kenny, K. S. Linsey, D. S. Lumia, and M. A. Maupin. Estimated

use of water in the united states in 2000. Circular 1268, U. S. Geol. Survey, Reston, VA,
May 2004. URL http://water.usgs.gov/pubs/circ/2004/circ1268/.

IPCC4. Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis, Summary for Policymakers (4th
Climate Assessment Report). Technical report, U.N. Intergov. Panel on Climate Change, 5
February 2007. URL http://www.ipcc.ch/SPM2feb07.pdf. 18 pp.

Jonathan Overpeck and Bradley Udall. Dry times ahead. Science, 328(5986):16421643, 2010.
doi: 10.1126/science.1186591. URL http://www.sciencemag.org.

Yadu N. Pokhrel, Naota Hanasaki, Pat J-F Yeh, Tomohito J. Yamada, Shinjiro Kanae, and Taikan
Oki. Model estimates of sea-level change due to anthropogenic impacts on terrestrial water
storage. Nature Geosci, advance online publication, May 2012. ISSN 1752-0908. doi:
10.1038/ngeo1476. URL http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1476.

A. K. Prasad and R. P. Singh. Changes in Himalayan Snow and Glacier Cover Between 1972
and 2000. EOS, 88(33):326, 17 August 2007. doi: 10.1029/2007EO330002.

W. E. Stegner. Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening
of the West. Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1954.
57
USGCRP. Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States. Cambridge
University Press, 2009. URL http://www.globalchange.gov/publications/reports/
scientific-assessments/us-impacts. Quadrennial report to U.S. Congress.