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By: Dr. Paul Doss and Laura Bordelon
See water levels at USI
Designing a Real-Time
monitoring system is the latest development in a series of undergraduate
student projects. This
monitoring system has built upon the work of recent student research
projects, each having provided essential information for the current and
future studies involving the Inglefield Aquifer.
Initially, when two wells were installed at the construction
site, Clark et al (2002) determined baseline physical and chemical data
for the local Inglefield Aquifer.
Elpers et al (2003) created
stratigraphic cross-sections and a potentiometric map of the Inglefield
Aquifer in western Vanderburgh County, IN.
This provided the working conceptual model that will help to
design all future investigations of the physical hydrogeologic and
water-quality characteristics of the local and regional aquifers and
watersheds.
Inkenbrandt, et al (2005),
Brown et al (2004), and Doss et al (2004) rigorously investigated the
strong inverse correlation between groundwater-levels and barometric
pressure, and the presence and significance of Earth-tide responses in
the aquifer. These studies helped define the Inglefield Aquifer as
confined with a rigid skeleton, and to constrain some of the physical
descriptors of the aquifer (Hydraulic conductivity and Storability).
JUSTIFICATION & BENEFITS OF REAL-TIME MONITORING
Right:
Doss and Bordelon conducting an interview about the local ground-water
resource with a local network news affiliate. Left:
Doss “showing off” the lab and describing some ground water
instrumentation with members of the public during a USI Science Center
outreach day.
See Equipment
As well as forming the
centerpiece of an excellent learning resource for USI students, the
monitoring lab provides real data and information about an important,
local natural resource. Real
time data provided from the instrumentation permits monitoring of the
potential surface and comparison to other concurrent events.
This monitoring will also provide a source of historical data on
the local ground-water resource.
Long-term data records are critical for the accurate interpretations of
climatic and land use and development
impacts on ground water (Taylor and Alley, 2002).
Historical data (long-term
water-level records), combined with this internet based real-time
monitoring, will provide information to those who are domestic users of
the local aquifer (Elpers et al, 2003).
Further, creating and displaying this record of a critical, but
unmanaged resource may provide information that is relevant to city
planning and land-use management strategies ( Alley et al, 1999).
These historical data, combined with our recent isotope
investigation (Curtis-Robinson and Doss, 2006), can aid in identifying
recharge areas and travel paths.
Knowledge of recharge areas, historical water level fluctuations, and
water-quality monitoring may help provide source-water protection for
domestic users of this aquifer (Alley et al, 1999).
Acknowledgments:
We would like to thank Elizabeth Curtis-Robinson for helping to compile
and program the Data Logger for the real-time monitoring effort.
Thank you to Dr. James Durbin for supplying pictures.
We must thank Gena Elpers, Carly Walton, Kieth Maasberg, Paul
Inkenbrandt, Robert J. Brown, and Dr. Tom Pickett for their previous
work in the lab and with the Inglefield Aquifer.
Doss thanks the Pott College Barnett Research Award program for
student support during this integrated program, and Bordelon thanks the
USI RISC program for travel grant assistance.
Alley, W.M., Reilly, T.E., and Franke, O.L., 1999,
Sustainability of Ground-Water Resources:
U.S.
Geological Survey,
Circular 1186, Denver, CO, 79 p.
Liu, L., Philpotts, A.R., and Gray, N.H., 2004, Service learning
practice in upper division geoscience courses:
Bridging
undergraduate learning, teaching, and research:
J. Geoscience Education, Vol, 52, no. 2, pp.
172-177.
Noll, , M. R., 2003, Building bridges between field and
laboratory studies in an undergraduate groundwater
course: J. Geoscience
Education, Vol, 51, no. 2, pp. 221-230.
Taylor, J. Charles and Alley M. William.
2002. Ground-Water-Level Monitoring and the Importance of
Long-
Tern Water-Level
Data. U.S. Geological Survey, Circular 1217, Denver, CO, 68 p
Tedesco, L.P. and Salazar, K.A., 2006, Using environmental
service learning in an urban environment to
address water quality
issues: J. Geoscience Education, Vol, 53, no. 2, pp. 123-132.
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