Utah Geological Survey
Link to: Utah Geological Survey Groundwater Information
NGWMN Contact:
Janae Wallace
(801) 537-3387
The Utah Geological Survey (UGS) is a water-quality data provider to the National Groundwater Monitoring Network (NGWMN). UGS currently maintains a network of 104 monitoring wells, majority of which have collected hourly data since 2011. USG serves data from 109 sites, which represent a combination of wells and springs, to the NGWMN Portal. UGS has been a part of the Network since 2014.
UGS provides water-quality data from the Basin and Range basin-fill aquifer, Basin and Range carbonate-rock aquifers, and Colorado Plateau aquifer.
NGWMN Projects:
Initial project to become a NGWMN data provider.
2016 Round 1: 7/1/2016 to 6/30/2018
Project to support maintenance of database connections to NGWMN portal.
2016 Round 2: 8/15/2016 to 8/13/2018
Project is to fill site-information gaps and perform well maintenance work. Survey grade GPS locations and land-surface altitudes will be determines at all sites and well construction details will be verified. Gap filling will also include entry of historic water-quality information from paper files and spreadsheets into the agency database. Well maintenance work is to pump 8 monitoring wells to verify the connection between the wells and the aquifer.
Project is a two-year project to add additional wells to the NGWMN, support persistent data service, and do well maintenance. Additional wells from their Snake Valley Network will be added to the NGWMN. Well maintenance work involves pumping 8 dedicated monitoring wells to clear sediment.
Two-year project to provide persistent data services, provide lithology data for 62 wells and pump 8 dedicated water-level monitoring wells to determine connection to the aquifer.
2019: 11/15/2019 to 11/14/2020
Project is to perform well maintenance on 8 water-level Network sites. These wells are not routinely pumped and will be pumped during this project to assess aquifer connectivity.
Project will provide persistent data services for two years to ensure that data continues to flow to the NGWMN Data Portal, and that sites and site information are up to date. They will also update their web services to better serve data from a recently updated agency database to the NGWMN data portal.
NGWMN Presentations:
December 2016 presentation to SOGW
March 2023 presentation to the NGWMN Data Providers Meeting
Site Selection and Classification
Site Selection
For the UGS Network, UGS selected wells and springs in the principal aquifers of Utah (Basin and Range basin-fill aquifers, Basin and Range carbonate-rock aquifers, and Colorado Plateau aquifers) and "other aquifers" that support withdrawals of regionally significant quantities of water. Three important areas that fall into the "other aquifers" on the national aquifer map (U.S. Geological Survey, 2003) are the Navajo Sandstone aquifer in the St. George region (significant also as a state-bounding aquifer), the karst aquifers of the southern Uinta Mountains in Ashley National Forest, and the valley-fill aquifers in the Middle Rocky Mountain Physiographic Province (intermontane basins), which provide much of the water to steadily growing rural "Wasatch Back" (a local term for communities situated east of the more populous Wasatch Front of the Middle Rocky Mountains) water users (similar to the National aquifer system of the Northern Rocky Mountain Intermontane Basins in Montana). UGS also sampled springs and wells (some of which are monitor wells established by the U. S Geological Survey during the 1970s) in the Uinta Basin, which is within the Colorado Plateau aquifer system and an active hydrocarbon-producing and hydraulic fracturing region.
UGS chose to include wells and springs from the existing UGS Network. To ensure future accessibility, most of the wells in this network are regularly pumped; they include privately held water sources for consumptive use, irrigation wells from farms and ranches, and public water sources for fish hatcheries. UGS chose wells with lithologic logs or sufficient aquifer information to ensure that they are representative of the aquifer of interest. UGS only incorporates a public water supply source into the network if it was the only representative, accessible well in the area or sampled infrequently for limited water quality chemistry (i.e., just nitrate and/or sulfate every few years), and only if the location is widely publicly known and allowed to be disclosed.
Most of the sites selected for the Basin and Range carbonate-rock aquifers are springs because they are the major water source emanating from these aquifers. Much of western Utah and the Wasatch Front, the most populous region of the state, are occupied by Basin and Range basin-fill aquifers, so UGS selected two representative water quality sites from each basin. For the Colorado Plateau aquifers, UGS tried to select at least one site per populated region (especially around popular and heavily traveled destinations such as Moab, an area that caters to two national parks) or per region of perceived ecological value.
Although the Pacific Northwest basin-fill aquifers and the Pacific Northwest volcanic-rock aquifers are present in the far northwest corner of Utah, they are not aquifers of significant use in the state. Therefore, UGS did not target these aquifers as part of the sampling network.
Site Classification
For the Basin and Range basin-fill aquifers, UGS assigned subnetworks on a basin-by-basin basis. Many of the Basin and Range basin-fill aquifers have undergone hydrologic research, much which is published and freely available. The USGS, in cooperation with the Utah Division of Water Rights (UDWRi), produces a yearly report summarizing the water-level status of the areas of groundwater development (Burden, 2015). UGS assigned subnetworks based on these published reports.
Most of the sites in the UGS Water-Quality Network are designated for trend monitoring, where samples are collected on a yearly basis. Due to snow and irrigation pumping, access to many of the sites in our network is limited to a single season. UGS will attempt to sample each site during the season of greatest use and will resample the sites at the same time each year. The USGS conducts routine surveillance monitoring with a subset of wells in Utah; UGS anticipates they will continue this surveillance monitoring process (hence, we avoided repetition by recognizing their targeted subset of wells).
Data Collection Techniques
For water quality sampling, the UTGS administers the following Quality Assurance Project Plans (QAPPs) and field technique documents which are available online:
- The UTGS follows the procedure outlined in the Unita Basin Study
- The UTGS also adheres to practices outlined by the Utah Division of Water Quality
- For criteria not covered by the above documents, the UGS defers to the NGWMN Framework Report (Chapter 5.2 and appendix 5)
For water-level measurements the UTGS follows the guidelines of the following documents:
- NGWMN Framework Report (chapter 5.1 and appendix 5):
- USGS Technical Procedures
Data Management
UGS provides high-quality data according to the data management plan found here.
UGS follows the procedures outlined by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality QAPP:
- Water quality analyses are conducted only by EPA- certified laboratories. This includes compliance with the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act, Federal Clean Water Act, and the Federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act.
- Each sampling trip consists of one field blank and one duplicate to ensure that laboratory standards are high. The EPA Region 8 Laboratory and the Utah Epidemiology and Laboratory Services also conduct in-lab quality assurance.
- Before water quality data are uploaded into the EPA Water Quality Exchange Database (WQX), they are automatically checked for charge balance.
- Each data submission is reviewed by at least two geologists before the data are submitted.
- Where applicable, site information is rechecked during each field visit.
Other Agency Information
Publications:
- Groundwater-quality
- Groundwater