An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing, permeable rock, rock fractures, or unconsolidated materials. Groundwater from aquifers can be extracted using a water well. Aquifers vary greatly in their characteristics. The study of water flow in aquifers and the characterization of aquifers is called hydrogeology. Related terms include aquitard, which is a bed of low permeability along an aquifer, and aquiclude, which is a solid, impermeable area underlying or overlying an aquifer, the pressure of which could create a confined aquifer. The classification of aquifers is as follows: Saturated versus unsaturated; aquifers versus aquitards; confined versus unconfined; isotropic versus anisotropic; porous, karst, or fractured; transboundary aquifer.
The Great Artesian Basin (GAB), located in Australia, is the largest and deepest artesian basin in the world, stretching over 1,700,000 square kilometres (660,000 sq mi), with measured water temperatures ranging from 30 to 100 °C. The basin provides the only source of fresh water through much of inland Australia.
The Southern Laurentian Channel is an ancient underground river in southern Ontario, Canada. The river predates the recent ice ages. The river valley was filled with glacial debris. Water still flows down this old valley—underground. The source of the aquifer is the Georgian Bay, approximately 200 kilometres (120 mi) away.
The Sydney Basin is an interim Australian bioregion and is both a structural entity and a depositional area, now preserved on the east coast of New South Wales, Australia and with some of its eastern side now subsided beneath the Tasman Sea. The basin is named for the city of Sydney, on which it is centred.
The Perth Basin is a thick, elongated sedimentary basin in Western Australia. It lies beneath the Swan Coastal Plain west of the Darling Scarp, representing the western limit of the much older Yilgarn Craton, and extends further west offshore. Cities and towns including Perth, Busselton, Bunbury, Mandurah and Geraldton are built over the Perth Basin.
The Sankoty aquifer is an aquifer in the U.S. state of Illinois that provides groundwater to a number of communities in northwestern and central Illinois. It is an unconsolidated deposit lying in a bedrock valley formerly occupied by the ancestral Mississippi River.
The geography of Sydney is characterised by its coastal location on a basin bordered by the Pacific Ocean to the east, the Blue Mountains to the west, the Hawkesbury River to the north and the Woronora Plateau to the south. Sydney lies on a submergent coastline on the east coast of New South Wales, where the ocean level has risen to flood deep river valleys (rias) carved in the Sydney sandstone. Port Jackson, better known as Sydney Harbour, is one such ria.
Surficial aquifers are shallow aquifers typically less than 50 feet (15 m) thick, but larger surficial aquifers of about 60 feet (18 m) have been mapped. They mostly consist of unconsolidated sand enclosed by layers of limestone, sandstone or clay and the water is commonly extracted for urban use. The aquifers are replenished by streams and from precipitation and can vary in volume considerably as the water table fluctuates. Being shallow, they are susceptible to contamination by fuel spills, industrial discharge, landfills, and saltwater. Parts of southeastern United States are dependent on surficial aquifers for their water supplies.
The Yarragadee Aquifer is a significant freshwater aquifer located in the south west of Western Australia and predominantly beneath the Swan Coastal Plain west of the Darling Scarp. It has a north–south range from about Geraldton to the south coast, but with a split in the formation south of Perth, Western Australia. The southern part is known as the South West Yarragadee Aquifer.
Centennial Parklands is the name given to a group of three urban parklands located in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Comprising approximately 360 hectares, the lands encompass Centennial Park, Moore Park and Queen's Park. The Parklands are listed on the New South Wales Heritage Register, with various components of national, state or local heritage significance. The parks are contained within the local government areas of City of Randwick, Waverley Municipal Council, and City of Sydney.
The McMurray Formation is a stratigraphic unit of Early Cretaceous age of the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin in northeastern Alberta. It takes the name from Fort McMurray and was first described from outcrops along the banks of the Athabasca River 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) north of Fort McMurray by F.H. McLearn in 1917. It is a well-studied example of fluvial to estuarine sedimentation, and it is economically important because it hosts most of the vast bitumen resources of the Athabasca Oil Sands region.
Botany Bay Groundwater Plume is contamination of the local aquifer in Botany Bay caused by a chemical leak. The groundwater that flows into Botany Bay contains pollutants linked to cancer and is regarded as the worst case of groundwater contamination in Australia.
The geology of Maine is part of the broader geology of New England and eastern North America.
The geology of the Gambia is defined by thick and comparatively recent sequences of sediments and sedimentary rocks, deposited in the last 66 million years. The country is underlain almost entirely by geologically recent Cenozoic sedimentary rocks. Much deeper basement rocks are likely present, although they are not well understood. Most research has focused on oil and groundwater exploration.
The geology of Mozambique is primarily extremely old Precambrian metamorphic and igneous crystalline basement rock, formed in the Archean and Proterozoic, in some cases more than two billion years ago. Mozambique contains greenstone belts and spans the Zimbabwe Craton, a section of ancient stable crust. The region was impacted by major tectonic events, such as the mountain building Irumide orogeny, Pan-African orogeny and the Snowball Earth glaciation. Large basins that formed in the last half-billion years have filled with extensive continental and marine sedimentary rocks, including rocks of the extensive Karoo Supergroup which exist across Southern Africa. In some cases these units are capped by volcanic rocks. As a result of its complex and ancient geology, Mozambique has deposits of iron, coal, gold, mineral sands, bauxite, copper and other natural resources.
The geology of Senegal formed beginning more than two billion years ago. The Archean greenschist Birimian rocks common throughout West Africa are the oldest in the country, intruded by Proterozoic granites. Basins formed in the interior during the Paleozoic and filled with sedimentary rocks, including tillite from a glaciation. With the rifting apart of the supercontinent Pangaea in the Mesozoic, the large Senegal Basin filled with thick sequences of marine and terrestrial sediments. Sea levels declined in the Eocene forming large phosphate deposits. Senegal is blanketed in thick layers of terrestrial sediments formed in the Quaternary. The country has extensive natural resources, including gold, diamonds, and iron.
The Botany Water Reserves are a heritage-listed former water supply system and now parkland and golf course at 1024 Botany Road, Mascot, Bayside Council, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by City Engineers, W. B. Rider, E. Bell (1856–1871), and Francis Bell (1871–1878). It is also known as Botany Swamps, Botany Wetlands, Mills Stream, Bridge Pond, Lakes Golf Course, Eastlakes Golf Course, Bonnie Doon Golf Course, and Astrolabe Park. The property is owned by Sydney Water, an agency of the Government of New South Wales. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 18 November 1999.
The geology of Mississippi includes some deep igneous and metamorphic crystalline basement rocks from the Precambrian known only from boreholes in the north, as well as sedimentary sequences from the Paleozoic. The region long experienced shallow marine conditions during the tectonic evolutions of the Mesozoic and Cenozoic, as coastal plain sediments accumulated up to 45,000 feet thick, including limestone, dolomite, marl, anhydrite and sandstone layers, with some oil and gas occurrences and the remnants of Cretaceous volcanic activity in some locations.
The geology of North Dakota includes thick sequences oil and coal bearing sedimentary rocks formed in shallow seas in the Paleozoic and Mesozoic, as well as terrestrial deposits from the Cenozoic on top of ancient Precambrian crystalline basement rocks. The state has extensive oil and gas, sand and gravel, coal, groundwater and other natural resources.
Groundwater in Nigeria is widely used for domestic, agricultural, and industrial supplies. The Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation estimate that in 2018 60% of the total population were dependent on groundwater point sources for their main drinking water source: 73% in rural areas and 45% in urban areas. The cities of Calabar and Port Harcourt are totally dependent on groundwater for their water supply.
