Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Return to search results
💡 Advanced Search Tip

Search by organization or tag to find related datasets

Digital data sets that describe aquifer characteristics of the High Plains aquifer in western Oklahoma

Published by U.S. Geological Survey | Department of the Interior | Metadata Last Checked: July 15, 2025 | Last Modified: 20201117
This data set consists of digital aquifer boundaries for the High Plains aquifer in western Oklahoma. This area encompasses the panhandle counties of Cimarron, Texas, and Beaver, and the western counties of Harper, Ellis, Woodward, Dewey, and Roger Mills. The High Plains aquifer underlies approximately 7,000 square miles of Oklahoma and is used extensively for irrigation. The High Plains aquifer is a water-table aquifer and consists predominately of the Tertiary-age Ogallala Formation and overlying Quaternary-age alluvial and terrace deposits. In some areas the aquifer is absent and the underlying Triassic, Jurassic, or Cretaceous-age rocks are exposed at the surface. These rocks are hydraulically connected with the aquifer in some areas. The High Plains aquifer is composed of interbedded sand, siltstone, clay, gravel, thin limestones, and caliche. The proportion of various lithological materials changes rapidly from place to place, but poorly sorted sand and gravel predominate. The rocks are poorly to moderately well cemented by calcium carbonate. The aquifer boundaries were constructed by extracting lines from digital surficial geology data sets based on a scale of 1:125,000 for the panhandle counties and 1:250,000 for the western counties. Some of the lines were digitized from maps in a published water-level elevation map for 1980.

Complete Metadata

data.gov

An official website of the GSA's Technology Transformation Services

Looking for U.S. government information and services?
Visit USA.gov