Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

Statistical summaries of simulated groundwater residence times for the 10 regional aquifers of the Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain aquifer system, at a 1 square-mile grid resolution

Metadata Updated: September 24, 2025

Groundwater residence times were simulated for the major regional aquifers of the Northern Atlantic Coastal Plain aquifer system from New York to North Carolina using particle tracking in a regional groundwater flow model. Millions of particles were distributed throughout the aquifers of the North Atlantic Coastal Plain in a MODFLOW model with a volume-weighted algorithm, then tracked backwards using MODPATH6 (Pollock, 2012) until termination of their paths at their sources of origin, usually the simulated water table. Particles were tracked under simulated transient hydrologic conditions from the reference time of January 1, 2018 backwards to 1900, then under simulated steady-state conditions prior to 1900 until eventual termination of their paths. The simulated residence time, or simulated age, of each particle is the time each particle took to travel backwards from its initial (year 2018) location in the aquifer to its source of origin. Simulated residence times of many individual particles were statistically aggregated for every model grid cell within each of 10 North Atlantic Coastal Plain regional aquifer units. From top to bottom, these include the surficial aquifer, the Upper Chesapeake aquifer, the Lower Chesapeake aquifer, the Piney Point aquifer, the Aquia aquifer, the Monmouth-Mount Laurel aquifer, the Matawan aquifer, the Magothy aquifer, the Potomac-Patapsco aquifer, and the Potomac-Patuxent aquifer. All model cells are one square mile in area but vary in thickness depending on the aquifer and the location. For all statistical computations, individual particle residence times were first modified to limit the statistical influence of unreasonably high and low values resulting from limitations in the simulation approach. Simulated particle residence time values less than or equal to 0.001 years were assigned this value as a minimum, which is less than one day. Particle residence times greater than 10,000,000 years were censored at this value, which is the approximate maximum reasonable residence time for the aquifer system. Statistics computed from the modified simulated residence-time values for each model cell for each aquifer unit include the number of particles originating in the cell, mean residence time, median residence time, minimum residence time, maximum residence time, 10th percentile of residence times, 25th percentile of residence times, 75th percentile of residence times, and 90th percentile of residence times. A table of these computed statistics is provided for each of the ten aquifer units, with entries organized by model cell identification number, which may be used to spatially orient the residence time statistics. A polygon shapefile of the groundwater model grid is also provided, with model-cell statistics joined for all aquifers.

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.

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 24, 2025

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI USGS DCAT-US

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 13, 2025
Metadata Updated Date September 24, 2025
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
Identifier http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/usgs-5d977037e4b0c4f70d11590e
Data Last Modified 2020-08-27T00:00:00Z
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://ddi.doi.gov/usgs-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 38abc730-a176-411d-83d9-57d2a34130f3
Harvest Source Id 2b80d118-ab3a-48ba-bd93-996bbacefac2
Harvest Source Title DOI USGS DCAT-US
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -79.4000, 34.6600, -69.8800, 42.5600
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 475ced441b0d1b093aa6fc7795bf6c54196edde571a6af0e0cd55e6800dd4672
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -79.4000, 34.6600, -79.4000, 42.5600, -69.8800, 42.5600, -69.8800, 34.6600, -79.4000, 34.6600}

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.