Delaware is home to extensive networks of tidal marshes, which provide an array of critical ecosystem services including carbon sequestration. These marshes accumulate carbon due to their relatively high plant productivity and relatively low rates of litter decomposition.
DGS staff members Rachel McQuiggan and Scott Andres are participants in a new National Science Foundation EPSCoR – funded effort, Water in the Changing Coastal Environment of Delaware (Project WiCCED).
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.
A recently released article “Hydrogeologic controls on groundwater discharge and nitrogen loads in a coastal watershed” by the Journal of Hydrology details the results of a joint groundwater simulation and water quality sampling study that focused on submarine groundwater discharge (SGD) to Indian River and Rehoboth Bays, part of Delaware Inland Bays.
This report presents a conceptual model of groundwater flow and the effects of nitrate (NO3-) loading and transport on shallow groundwater quality in a portion of the Indian River watershed, eastern Sussex County, Delaware. Three-dimensional, numerical simulations of groundwater flow, particle tracking, and contaminant transport were constructed and tested against data collected in previous hydrogeological and water-quality studies.
Open-File Report 50 presents and describes a database of geochronological information for coastal deposits of the US Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as for sites from the Pacific coast of South America. This database represents a synthesis of nearly forty years of study conducted by John F. Wehmiller and students in the Department of Geological Sciences, University of Delaware, as well as many collaborating colleagues.
