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Domestic groundwater withdrawal rates from the Ozark Plateaus aquifer system, 1900 to 2010

Metadata Updated: October 28, 2023

Groundwater is an often overlooked freshwater resource compared to surface water, but groundwater is used widely across the United States, especially during periods of drought. If groundwater models can successfully simulate past conditions, they may be used to evaluate potential future pumping scenarios or climate conditions, thus providing a valuable planning tool for water-resource managers. Quantifying the groundwater-use component for a groundwater model is a vital but often challenging endeavor. This dataset includes groundwater withdrawal rates modeled for the Ozark Plateaus aquifer system (Ozark system) from 1900 to 2010 by county for domestic water use. Public supply, non-agriculture, livestock, and agriculture groundwater withdrawal rates are available in the complementary dataset “Public supply, non-agriculture, livestock, and agriculture groundwater withdrawal rates from the Ozark Plateaus aquifer system, 1900 to 2010”. The Ozark system is located in the central United States and is composed of interbedded Cambrian to Pennsylvanian clastic and carbonate lithologies. In stratigraphic order, the Ozark system includes the Basement confining unit, St. Francois aquifer, St. Francois confining unit, Ozark aquifer, Ozark confining unit, Springfield Plateau aquifer, and Western Interior Plains confining system. Generally, the lower portion of the Ozark aquifer is the primary source of groundwater across much of Missouri and the Springfield Plateau aquifer is used across northern Arkansas. A full description of the methods used to model groundwater withdrawal rates from the Ozark system are available in Knierim et al. (2017) (see larger work citation). Briefly, groundwater use was modeled by 1) acquiring site-specific and county-level groundwater withdrawal rates and well locations (with and without pumping information) from state agencies and the U.S. Geological Survey, 2) linearly interpolating groundwater withdrawal rates to create a yearly time-step for the period of observations (generally 1962 to 2010), 3) extrapolating county-level groundwater withdrawal rates to 1900 for domestic groundwater use assuming use was linearly related to population change, then constraining groundwater withdrawal rate to 0 million liters per day (ML/d) in 1900 using a multiplier that incrementally ranged from zero in 1900 to one in 2010, 4) attributing groundwater withdrawal rates to well locations using a hierarchical process where county-level groundwater withdrawal rates were disaggregated to wells where pumping was known to occur at any time, followed by county-level groundwater withdrawal rates disaggregated to well locations with a potential groundwater-use type based on land use, and 5) aggregation into model cells (row, column, layer) and county by summing modeled site-specific groundwater withdrawal rates using well location and depth. The large dataset (148,836 well locations) and long period (110 years) necessitated modeling groundwater use programmatically using Python 2.7.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date May 31, 2023
Metadata Updated Date October 28, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date May 31, 2023
Metadata Updated Date October 28, 2023
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/ce64b1d4b1bc39616962c902cd8d91d6
Identifier USGS:577ec9d5e4b0ef4d2f44f0b3
Data Last Modified 20200821
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 59c70d38-3461-4967-8a83-aec774a66a5b
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -95.543098529,34.724102165,-89.250689276,39.442693516
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash c6059c2bc3b5605b5beb0b0cfafb0d95dd658b9863409b6479f8694b406e84d0
Source Schema Version 1.1
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