3rd Annual Española Basin Workshop
Geology and Hydrology of the Española Basin
March 2-3, 2004     Santa Fe, NM

Theme Sessions for the 3rd Annual Española Workshop

As a follow-up to discussion groups from the first two Española basin workshops, EBTAG is developing a list of critical activities/data needs for better understanding the hydrogeologic framework in the Española basin. With this list, we hope to identify common priorities for needed work in order to successfully meet the diversity of problems to be addressed in the basin. As part of the feedback process, we plan to hold a full day of talks and posters on Wednesday to highlight work that is currently addressing these common needs in terms of five themes (below), followed by discussion sessions. The theme sessions will be in addition to the regular poster session on Tuesday afternoon. Speakers and poster presenters for the theme sessions will be invited and selected from the abstracts submitted to the workshop, based on which abstracts present work that meets a number of needs or presents a wide range of benefits.

Theme 1. Basic Water Data

Collection and organization of fundamental water data, including:

• Water levels - current, historic, and time series water levels; depth-specific water levels particularly from deep production zones; and a long-term water-level monitoring network; piezometer data
• Water use and production data - production data from major users (municipal wells) as well as minor users (domestic wells and mutual domestic associations).
• Stream flow data

Understanding natural and anthropogenic impacts to water quality

• Data and analysis; natural and anthropogenic sources of dissolved species.
• Relationship of water quality to water-rock interaction and flow paths

Multi-disciplinary approaches (geologic, geophysical, geochemical, hydrologic, and modeling) for delineation of 3-D basin architecture and groundwater flow paths, including:

• Aqueous geochemistry and water age dating
• Dipping beds and faults - effects of subcrop rock type and structure on groundwater flow
• Three-dimensional heterogeneity related to sedimentary architecture and hydraulic properties
• Geophysical interpretation of basin structure and unit thicknesses
• Grain-size trends in depositional facies
• Subsidence
• Use of well-field drawdown data for determination of transmissivity and anisotropy of hydrostratigraphic units.
• Basin-wide recharge-discharge relationships for understanding long-term water balance.

Data needs and studies for determining watershed- or local-scale water balance and evaluation of groundwater impacts, including:

• Streamflow/seepage data
• Precipitation data
• Surface water and groundwater interaction (geologic controls and effect of anisotropy)
• Impacts of pumpage on stream discharge, and impacts of treatment outfalls on recharge
• Geochemistry and age dating
• Local-scale groundwater/surface water models

Needs for new software and techniques to help integrate and interpret multi-disciplinary data sets, incorporate physical data into conceptual, analytical and/or numerical models, and hypothesis testing using models.

• how to get the geological data into the analytical or numerical solutions/simulations?
• what data, collected in what fashion, and at what locations, are the most significant for modeling, and hence characterizing, the hydrogeological system?