Field Trip--September 30, 2014

Topic: Groundwater Resources of the Lower Kansas River Valley

Groundwater resources of the Kansas River alluvial aquifer are becoming increasingly important for public and other water supplies of the more populated area of northeast Kansas. The reduction in storage capacity by sedimentation in large reservoirs in the Kansas River basin will further increase the importance of the downstream groundwater supplies. The Kansas River alluvial aquifer should be viewed as a subsurface reservoir storage system that could be managed in concert with the surface reservoir storage. The new Vision for the Future of Water in Kansas includes a section on water management that recognizes that additional data and modeling of the alluvial aquifer system are needed to examine the effects of future development and management on river and groundwater levels. The field trip will visit a number of locations important for water supply in the lower Kansas River valley and address issues of groundwater production from well fields, aquifer characterization and monitoring (including at the KGS Geohydrologic Experimental and Monitoring Site [GEMS]), groundwater quality (remediation, the effects of operations such as sand pits), and stream-aquifer interactions. The trip will include a presentation on reservoir sedimentation to put in context the importance of managing reservoir and groundwater storage in the Kansas River basin as an integrated system.

Trip Schedule

The tentative schedule for the field trip includes leaving from the Holiday Inn at 8:30 am, visiting public water supply, water-level monitoring, and aquifer characterization (GEMS) locations in the morning, box lunch and the reservoir sedimentation presentation at the KU Field Station, and remediation and additional public water supply (with discussion of water-quality issues and stream-aquifer interactions) locations in the afternoon. The plan is to return to the Holiday Inn about 5:15 pm.

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