Groundwater datasets
In the United States, data depicted on blue lines,
the color of surface water features on topographic
maps, have been compiled by the Unites States
Geological Survey (USGS) into seamless national
hydrography datasets at scales of 1:100,000 and
1:24,000, but no equivalent national hydrogeology
dataset exists. Subsurface hydrogeologic data
are measured and archived by many federal, state,
and local groundwater agencies in a fragmented
way without a common means of data access and
synthesis. The lack of a systematic organization of
hydrogeologic and groundwater data means that
their formats vary from state to state, from location
to location, and from project to project. A new
groundwater investigation can be like an Easter
egg hunt, where you search around for the basic
data needed to support the investigation, coping
with many disparate data types and formats from
different data sources.
We envisage that the adoption of the Arc Hydro
Groundwater data model will lead to better organization
of groundwater data so that standardized
groundwater and hydrogeologic datasets
can be systematically compiled and maintained.
Since hydrogeology is a subfield of geology, it
is appropriate that Arc Hydro Groundwater has
a geology component to allow for incorporating
existing geologic maps and data into Arc Hydro
Groundwater datasets.
The ArcGIS Desktop software system is the key
means by which groundwater information is compiled
and synthesized in Arc Hydro Groundwater.
However, this is now being supplemented by
ArcGIS Server and ArcGIS Online, by which compiled
Arc Hydro datasets can be published on the
Internet as maps and data services. This emerging
“services-oriented architecture” for geospatial
information is an important way for separate
organizations to publish geographically distributed
groundwater datasets in a manner that facilitates
their assembly and integration over a region.