The Delaware Geological Survey, in cooperation with the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, completed a groundwater-monitoring, infrastructure-construction, and data-collection project in southern New Castle and northern Kent Counties, Delaware.
Peter P. McLaughlin Jr., of the Delaware Geological Survey, presented two papers at the 2015 annual meeting of the Geological Society of America (GSA), November 1-4, Baltimore.
The geology and hydrology of the area between Wrangle Hill and Delaware City, Delaware, have been the focus of numerous studies since the 1950s because of the importance of the local groundwater supply and the potential environmental impact of industrial activity. In this report, 490 boreholes from six decades of drilling provide dense coverage, allowing detailed characterization of the subsurface geologic framework that controls groundwater occurrence and flow.
David Wunsch, director of the Delaware Geological Survey and state geologist, and Peter McLaughlin, senior scientist with the Delaware Geological Survey, attended the annual meeting of Geological Society of America in Charlotte, N.C., Nov. 4-7.
Scientists will sink more than 1.4 miles of wells into northern Kent County and southern New Castle County aquifers in the coming year, hoping to pump out a flood of new information about groundwater quantity and quality in current and future growth areas.
The Delaware Geological Survey (DGS) released a new technical report entitled Simulation of Groundwater Flow in Southern New Castle County, Delaware, which was prepared by Changming He and A. Scott Andres of the DGS.
DGS Report of Investigations No. 77 is a preliminary step in developing a detailed understanding of the subsurface hydrology and evaluating groundwater availability in major aquifer systems beneath southern New Castle County and parts of northern Kent County, which are expected to have greater demands for groundwater in the next 20 years due to population growth.
Published as a Special Publication, this is the first generalized statewide geologic map of Delaware.
The stratigraphy of the Coastal Plain of Delaware is discussed with emphasis placed upon an appraisal of the stratigraphic nomenclature. A revised stratigraphic column for Delaware is proposed. Rock stratigraphic units, based mainly on data from certain key wells, are described and the published names which have been or which might conceivably be applied to those units are reviewed. In each case a name is chosen and the reasons for the choice are stated. The relationships between the column established for Delaware and the recognized columns for adjacent states are considered.
Dark-red, gray, pink, and white silty clay to clayey silt and very fine to medium sand beds. Beds of gray clayey silt to very fine sand that contain pieces of charcoal and lignite are common. Deposited in a fluvial setting in a tropical to subtropical environment as indicated by abundant paleosol horizons. Ranges from 20 ft updip to over 1600 ft thick in southern New Castle County.
This report presents a new time-stratigraphic framework for the subsurface Potomac Formation of New Castle County, Delaware, part of adjacent Cecil County, Maryland, and nearby tie-in boreholes in New Jersey. The framework is based on a geophysical well-log correlation datum that approximates the contact between Upper and Lower Cretaceous sediments. This datum is constrained by age determinations based on published and unpublished results of studies of fossil pollen and spores in samples of sediment cores from boreholes in the study area.