Talk:Ogallala Aquifer

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Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Ryanlcrumley.

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High Plains Aquifer
The Ogallala Aquifer is the largest portion of the High Plains Aquifer. The eastern spur of the aquifer in Kansas is not a part of the Ogallala formation and is made up of the Great Bend Prairie Aquifer and the Equus Beds aquifer. Most of the Wyoming portion of the aquifer and the eastern and northwestern parts of the Nebraska portion, as well as the western part of the South Dakota portion, are also separate from the Ogallala formation and thus not a part of the Ogallala Aquifer. Lieutenant pepper (talk) 16:34, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Pickens Plan Connection
It would be nice to see some info detailing the relationship between T. Boone Pickens, his wind energy plan, the land he owns above this aquifer, his desire to drain the aquifer, and eminent domain. Biturica (talk) 04:46, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Severe Inconsistencies!
As i'm reading this article, first it says:


 * "Presently, groundwater in the United States is utilized approximately four times faster than it is naturally replaced.[citation needed]"

then it says:
 * "Today, water is being extracted at rates exceeding one hundred times the natural replacement rate.[citation needed]"

This is extremely poor reporting. Will somebody please check the sources and make this article accurate?! --Anonymous Reader —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.209.219.84 (talk) 21:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC).
 * Furthermore, both are uncited and could lead to an environmentalist POV. If references can be provided, they should be changed to match and left in. Otherwise, it may come across as an agenda. The 'citation needed' remark emphasizes that appearance. BobertWABC (talk) 17:07, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Both the approximations are probably correct for different parts of the aquifer. I added the range of rates of recharge and cited the paper that they were shown in. Lieutenant pepper (talk) 16:59, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

Water Mining
I'd recommend taking the general hydrological information provided here and integrating it into the new Water Mining article, and let this article be particularly about the Ogallala Aquifer. 75.6.148.210 06:00, 29 September 2006 (UTC)

Spelling
Is it Oglala or Ogalala? Google search shows both, with a slight numerical superiority to Ogalala. -- Zoe


 * It shows many more for Ogallala (two Ls the first time) - 5000 and odd rather than 100 and odd. I'll move it there. --Camembert

The "proper" name, geologically speaking, seems to be "High Plains Aquifer". That's how it's referred to in all USGS references that I find, among others. I'll move it there if convincing objections don't arise here soon. --Kbh3rd 18:17, 27 Oct 2004 (UTC)
 * Negative, more common name is Ogallala. Leave it here. --M1ss1ontomars2k4 04:37, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
 * The USGS and KGS both use High Plains Aquifer in all of their publications. Non-technical common usage, though, seems to prefer Ogallala. I think that the article should mention that the entities monitoring this aquifer refer to it primarily as the High Plains Aquifer Lieutenant pepper (talk) 17:05, 24 November 2009 (UTC)
 * Apparently, the aquifer was originally called the Ogallala, but then it was discovered that the aquifer spanned more than just the Ogallala Formation, so the USGS changed its name to the High Plains Aquifer (http://www.kgs.ku.edu/HighPlains/atlas/ataqhpr.htm). Is there a formal way to propose an article name change? I think it's in order as High Plains Aquifer is more correct. Lieutenant pepper (talk) 18:33, 24 November 2009 (UTC)

The correct spelling is Ogallala...i got this from the USGS website

Sections?
Should this be broke up into subject based sections? Or is this about all the material it will have? Some more info from the many USGS reports on it could be used to make it much more quantitative; but it is pretty good right now, I think. --kris 00:31, 22 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I thought about sections. I'm not sure there's quite enough there now.  If it were to be broken up, sections on its origins/geology and exploitation/depletion are obvious. -- Kbh3rd 02:33, 22 May 2005 (UTC)


 * I wrote that before seeing what changes you wrought to my prose – good work! I bet you could break it into sections to good effect.  What it could really use now are some good references. -- Kbh3rd 02:41, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Sustainability
A section on the sustainability of the aquifer for irrigation purposes would be useful - see : "Estimates for its remaining lifespan vary in different areas, ranging from 60 to 250 years." Ziggurat 01:28, 22 March 2006 (UTC) This is a good, if dated, article on plans for large scale exploitation of the high plains aquifer to provide fresh water to the rapidly growing cities of the southwest and the problems with Texas's "right of capture" policy for groundwater. Litch Sat Jul 8 15:09:55 CDT 2006
 * Desertification

Not to mention, the impact of meat-eating, cow milk production, and the benefits to the aquifer of large numbers of humans going vegan. Source - Diet for a New America, by John Robbins.

I really like the "water level change" map, but it's twelve years out of date; anyone know of a more recent one. TomSchaffter 23:46, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

"Agricultural dependence on this valuable water source needs to change within a generation in order to save this invaluable groundwater source." This statement is unsourced and seems more like a piece of advocacy than a piece of fact, particularly given the fact that the article mentions that some parts of the aquifer have increased water levels. If this is actually true, fine, but it needs to be sourced to some reliable source (Dept. of Agriculture?). Otherwise, it just sounds like a conservationist POV. --Nathan

Depictions/References in Popular Fiction?
Wondering if such references and depictions would be considered fair for inclusion in this article in their own section? - D. Williams 8 Apr 2006

Good map, bad map
Dang! I just replaced the GIF image of water level changes with a nice new SVG version created from the same data. While admiring the result I noticed that the red outline of the aquifer is misplaced in the second image, that I just made earlier in the week. It's not a huge error, but I certainly need to correct it. Next on my to-do list was an SVG version of that second map. I think the message of that map, water usage per county in the area of the aquifer, is essentially unaffected by the error, so I am inclined to leave it up until the correction is ready. --Kbh3rd talk 03:19, 28 February 2009 (UTC)


 * C'est fini. A new SVG map is up that shows the annual (2000) rate of withdrawals per square mile.  Because the counties are of vastly different sizes, the per mi2 number gives a better overall visual impression of where water is being pumped most intensly.  This can be seen by comparing the two maps, per county and per sq. mile.  Those eight or so counties in south-central Nebraska are among the most intense users of groundwater, led by Hamilton.  Conversely, large Chaves County, New Mexico withdraws comparatively little, considering its size, but that fact is obfuscated in the by-the-gallon map that disregards county size.


 * Note that the data source is not by aquifer. Obviously some of the shaded counties outside of the Ogallala Aquifer area draw from other aquifers.  I do not know, and the data at hand do not indicate, whether or not some withdrawal from within the Ogallala boundaries are from other sources.  However, it is obvious from the map, even if you didn't already know it, that the largest withdrawals of fresh water in these states correlates highly with the Ogallala.


 * Stylistically, I chose to use the recommended colors for the base of the new map, augmented by the depiction of water usage in green. I chose green rather than blue because the largest use, overall, is for agriculture, ergo green fields. For the trivia mongers among us, within these eight states the county with the highest withdrawal rate in 2000 for its size was Hamilton County, Nebraska, and the highest drawer overall was Gaines County, Texas, according to the cited data.


 * Data sources are comprehesively cited on the image information page. --Kbh3rd talk 00:59, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

Saturated thickness, v.2
I just put up a new version of the map of the saturated thickness. The main difference are: --Kbh3rd talk 01:37, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The base SVG file was generated directly from the GIS data files using a perl program I've been working on for the purpose. (Labels and legend were added after the fact with Inkscape.)  The previous version was generated as a bitmap in a GIS program, and the bitmap was then converted to an SVG file.  Therefore:
 * The result is a much cleaner, sharper image, especially at higher resolutions.
 * The file is also more editable if anyone has a need to; the parts are cleanly arranged in clearly labeled groups rather than undifferentiated blobs of color.
 * The file size is much smaller.
 * There is a thin outline around each colored zone.
 * I tweaked the color scale a little at the low end.
 * The whole states are shown, as opposed to being zoomed in on the aquifer. I'm ambivalent about this change.  It makes the aquifer relatively smaller, but more clearly shows the relationship of the aquifer to the extent of the states.
 * Major rivers flowing through the area are shown. The GIS file for these has a rougher resolution than the other data files, but that's only apparent when zooming in fairly tightly.
 * Unfortunately, the labels for the Platte and Arkansas rivers don't show up! They're there in Inkscape, in Imagemagick's "display" utility, and in Mozilla.  What is it with Wikimedia's SVG interpreter that it never seems to want to show what the others do?  I'll have to fix that, somehow.  Unfortunately, there's no telling how many new versions I'll have to upload to see how WM's SVG renderer copes with it.  Grrrr.  (Hmm.. I just tried it with GIMP, and it renders the same was as Wikimedia does.  I wonder if that's where they got their SVG engine from?  At least I know to not upload any more SVGs until trying them in GIMP.)
 * And what's different about those labels is that they're curved – placed on a path. Make a note not to use that SVG feature in the future.  Grrr, again. --Kbh3rd talk  01:52, 31 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The N Platte is wrong. The river starts near Walden in Colorado, not near South Pass in Wyoming (that's the Sweetwater). 23.167.32.245 (talk) 19:15, 19 December 2023 (UTC)

Aquifer balance
That edit summary line is sometimes just too short...

I've reverted the edit by 193.146.122.66 because I didn't see the 10 km3/yr (8m acre-ft) in the cited text. The edit was also done somewhat clumsily, IMHO. I'd be happy to have the information back in the article if it is properly sourced and cleanly edited -- maybe it's there and I just missed it. I've also changed the citation from geology.com to the publication at the USGS. --Kbh3rd talk 03:32, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Almost Plagiarism
It probably is technically not plagiarism, but I would feel more comfortable if the section citing reference number three, npwd.org, was reworded a bit. It is kind of similar to the source.--Jp07 (talk) 06:52, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

T. Boone Pickens
Per WP:GRAPEVINE, I've removed an addition to the in-popular-culture section, referring to the TV show "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura" and allegations about T. Boone Pickens. The allegations were contentious; Pickens is a living person; and there was no source cited, apart from the non-specific reference to the TV show. Ammodramus (talk) 18:16, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

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External links modified (January 2018)
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terminology: Ogallala vs. Oglala?
What can be said about the source of the term "Ogallala" and its relationship, if any, to Oglala, "one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people"? Thanks, DavidMCEddy (talk) 14:42, 22 May 2023 (UTC)


 * It is presently covered in the normal way. The page reports that aquifer is named (per usual) for the geologic unit that holds it. The article for the geologic unit, Ogallala Formation, reports (a bit clumbsily) that the geologic unit is named (per normal practice) for a geographic location that well-represents the typical physical appearance of the unit. Thus, this unit is named for Ogallala, Nebraska. The page for that city reports the namesake as Oglala Sioux.
 * It would be true to say that the name "Ogallala" has its origin in the name of the Oglala, under the derivation given above, but it is not quite true to say that the Ogallala Aquifer is directly named for the Oglala.
 * If you want to mention it, you should at least say that the name for the aquifer comes from Ogallala, Nebraska, which got its name from the Oglala.
 * IveGoneAway (talk) 19:45, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Buffalo Commons?
Anyone to add this drastic idea for western Kansas here? h-stt !?  16:44, 19 May 2024 (UTC)