Case Study - Utah Groundwater Well Levels

Figure 1. Adjusted groundwater levels for 90 wells in the upper stream, 16 wells in the central and 57 wells in the downstream of the lower Weber River watershed. Each well level trace adjusted to start at the level of the mean on the current date of wells whose records started earlier.

The purpose of this case study is to examine trends in groundwater levels measured in wells within the Weber River Basin of Northern Utah, USA, to see if they are related to trends in other landscape scale factors such as land cover, development, precipitation, temperature, runoff ratio, and streamflow. Ultimately, we want to learn how watershed management and land use impact groundwater levels (as a surrogate for the amount of water stored in the subsurface) and how that in turn affects streamflow.

This case study demonstrates the use of ESRI ArcGIS, HydroObjects, HydroGET, and HydroExcel spreadsheet to download and analyze data for approximately 1,400 USGS well. Trends in the groundwater levels are then examined using R.

Resources

• Groundwater Well Level Case Study
• Case Study Data