Red River of the North Basin
National Water-Quality Assessment Program
Strobel, M.L., 1992, Hydrologic Restrictions to Saline Ground-Water
Discharge in the Red River of the North Drainage Basin, North Dakota:
Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1992,
Abstracts with Program, v. 24, no. 7, p. 337.
Abstract
Discharge of saline water from bedrock aquifers along the eastern margin of
the Williston basin is restricted by surficial glacial till and lacustrine
deposits in the Red River of the North drainage basin. Water from these
aquifers reaches the surface by (1) diffusion; (2) slow, upward seepage along
zones of relatively larger hydraulic conductivity in the till and lacustrine
deposits; or (3) flow from artesian wells. Ground-water quality varies near
the surface because of mixing of water being discharged from bedrock aquifers
with shallower ground-water in the surficial deposits.
Ground-water quality, hydraulic-gradient, and hydraulic-conductivity data
obtained from pumped-well and slug tests indicated that flow in the surficial
deposits is eastward, but at slow rates because of small hydraulic
conductivities. Base-flow and specific-conductance measurements of water in
tributaries to the Red River of the North indicate that focused points of
ground-water discharge result in substantial increases in salinity in surface
water in the northern part of the basin in North Dakota.
Core analyses and drillers' logs were used to generalize hydrogeologic
characteristics of the deposits in the basin, and a two-dimensional
ground-water-flow model was used to simulate the basin's geohydrologic
processes. Model results indicate that the ground-water flow paths in the
bedrock aquifers contributes to the overall increase in ground-water discharge
toward the east. Model results are supported by water-quality data collected
along an east-west hdrogeologic section.
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U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
