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High Plains Aquifer Monitoring

figure
Figure 1. Location of the proposed study area (blue box) in Curry County, New Mexico. Modified from Figure 6 of Rawling and Rinehart (2018). Northwest trending zones of tan to yellow colors north of Clovis are two paleochannels in the Ogallala Formation.
(click for a larger version)
2022
figure
Figure 2. Schematic diagram of a paleochannel in the Ogallala Formation.
(click for a larger version)

The NMBGMR is working with the Ogallala Land & Water Conservancy to measure water levels in the High Plains Aquifer system near Clovis, New Mexico. The study area (Figure 1) consists of two paleochannels in the Miocene- to Pliocene-age Ogallala Formation. The Ogallala Formation is much thicker in these areas because the streams that deposited it had eroded the underlying bedrock more deeply than in adjacent areas (Figure 2). The High Plains Aquifer, which occurs within the Ogallala Formation, thus has a greater potential saturated thickness in the paleochannel areas. In addition, the sediments of the Ogallala Formation tend to be coarser-grained in the paleochannel areas (coarse sand and gravel) than in the intervening paleo-upland areas (silt and sand; Pazzaglia and Hawley, 2004). This results in higher permeability and a higher-quality aquifer.

Results

Rawling, G., 2024, Winter 2022–2023 water-level elevation map and estimation of water in storage for a region northwest of Clovis, New Mexico: New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources Open-File Report 626, 31 p. https://doi.org/10.58799/OFR-626

References

  1. Rawling, Geoffrey, 2025, Winter 2024 Water-Level Monitoring results for a Region Northwest of Clovis, NM, New Mexico Bureau of Geology and Mineral Resources Open File Report 637, 8p.
  2. Rawling, Geoffrey, 2018, Mapping the Lifetime of the Ogallala Aquifer in East-Central New Mexico, New Mexico Earth Matters, v. 18, no. 2, pp. 1-6.
  3. Rawling, Geoffrey C.; Rinehart, Alex J., 2018, Lifetime projections for the High Plains Aquifer in east-central New Mexico, New Mexico Bureau of Geology Mineral Resources, Bulletin, v. 162, pp. 1-47.
  4. Rawling, Geoffrey, and Timmons, Stacy, 2017, Mapping the Aquifer Lifetime in the Curry and Roosevelt County Region, New Mexico Bureau of Geology & Mineral Resources, Aquifer Mapping Program Fact Sheet, 4 pp. (this is a nontechnical summary of the report for the general public).
  5. Rawling, Geoffrey C., 2016, A hydrogeologic investigation of Curry and Roosevelt counties, New Mexico, New Mexico Bureau of Geology Mineral Resources, Open-file Report 580, pp. 47.

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