| Title | Motivation | Goals | Data | Methods | Results | Conclusions |
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This is an overview placing the area of study within a GMT map of Arizona. Look for a tiny red rectangle just below the middle of the image. |
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This is a GMT plot showing one of my data sets, the location and total depth of several wells. |
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This map shows several Phoenix area highways and surface streets, to better identify the area of study, which is the red-brown rectangle in the middle. |
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Zooming in on the area of study makes it easier to see some of the local roads where I drove with my GPS in order to measure where some of the wells were located. This gave me the necessary conversion factors between the Arizona State Plane coordinate system (used in my source data) and the degrees / minutes / seconds system more common to some mapping programs like GMT. |
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This image zooms in even closer. The area of study is approximately bounded on the North and West by freeways. Most of Sky Harbor Airport is just below the South boundary. |
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This shows the same image, rotated for perspective. |
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Continuing to rotate, I have shut off the red rectangle. At this point the vertical lines (representing wells) become more visible. A light gray box identifies the area of study including depth. |
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Looking at the east end of the study area, there are not very many wells. |
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Zooming in on the west end, there are more wells, which can tell us more about what shapes exist underground. |
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Now I have shut off the roads to see the wells better. |
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Continuing to zoom in, you should be able to see three distinct colors in several of the wells. Gray represents Salt River Gravels. Blue indicates Basin Fill. Both of these are sedimentary deposits which could be expected to be relatively porous, permitting groundwater flow. The bedrock is shown in red-brown. Some wells stop as soon as they encounter bedrock, so there is not much red to see. However, the bedrock depth is still available for my calculations. |
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GMT has a program called "surface",
which I used to mathematically generate a shape
fitting all the known bedrock data points.
It is important to note that this is not based on any geologic analysis
of the materials or structures.
It is only a surface plotted over the data.
The tickmarks in the foreground are a mile apart, showing that this portion of the study area covers just over two miles. |
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With 3-times vertical exaggeration, an underground bedrock "ridge" becomes apparent, trending directly away from this viewpoint. By studying images like this, one could obtain a better understanding of underground shapes and their potential influence on groundwater flow. |
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