Assessment of Brackish Water Resources in the Texas Gulf Coast
Wednesday, October 17, 2012: 2:00 p.m.
Steven C. Young, Ph.D., PG, PE
,
INTERA Inc., Austin, TX
Scott Hamlin, Ph.D.
,
Bureau of Economic Geology, Austin, TX
Daniel Lupton
,
INTERA Inc., Austin
Ernie Baker, PG
,
USGS, Austin, TX
The presentation discusses results from several brackish water assessments that cover multiple counties in the Texas Gulf Coast. These assessments were performed for groundwater conservation districts to identify alternative water supplies in response to 2011 drought conditions. The presentation discusses approaches used to determine volumes of brackish water and depths to base of freshwater. These approaches include methods for calculating total dissolved solids (TDS) from geophysical logs. Where possible, concentrations of TDS calculated from geophysical logs were checked against the measurements of TDS at wells in close proximity of the geophysical log location. The presentation will also provide results from detailed analyses of changes in groundwater quality near several salt domes. For these salt domes, transacts of lithology and water quality were generated to illustrate the geohydrochemical complexities affecting the transport of groundwater solutions near salt domes.
Steven C. Young, Ph.D., PG, PE, INTERA Inc., Austin, TX
Steven Young has 30 years of experience in characterizing and modeling groundwater systems. Young completed his graduate studies at Stanford University and the University of Waterloo. His expertise includes developing groundwater models and applying parameterization estimation methods to improve the predictive accuracy of groundwater models. He has worked extensively in the Texas Gulf Coast Aquifer System for the last 10 years.
Scott Hamlin, Ph.D., Bureau of Economic Geology, Austin, TX
Scott Hamlin is a Research Scientist Associate at the Bureau of Economic Geology with over 27 years of experience in the field of hydrostratigraphic and depositional environment interpretation. His areas of expertise include sedimentary geology, stratigraphy and basin analysis, hydrocarbon reservoir analysis, groundwater flow modeling, GIS, geostatistics, and computer analysis of geologic systems. Hamlin has 27 years of experience with the sequence stratigraphy and depositional environments of the deposits making up the Gulf Coast Aquifer.
Daniel Lupton, INTERA Inc., Austin
Daniel Lupton has a B.S. in Resource and Environmental Studies (Geology emphasis) from Texas State University and an M.S. in Hydrogeology from the University of Texas at San Antonio. His research and professional experience ranges from stratigraphic correlation of oil and gas prospects to evaluation of groundwater and surface water systems and encompasses both field and numerical techniques. Much of Lupton’s experience has involved evaluations of groundwater basins to quantify local-, intermediate-, and regional-flow regimes. He co-developed a method for evaluating areas of recharge and discharge based on correlations of naturally occurring features.
Ernie Baker, PG, USGS, Austin, TX
Ernie Baker has 50 years of groundwater experience in Texas, including 41 years with the USGS Water Resource Division. He has been the Texas District's Deputy Chief of Projects for the Coastal Plain of Texas. Baker's major expertise is in geophysical bore-hole log intepretation, having estimated thousands of electric logs in Texas. Baker has identified all the aquifers and confining beds in the Texas Coastal Plain and has modeled over 20,000 square miles of the Texas Coastal Plain in terms of groundwater flow.
