DESIGN, INSTALLATION, AND UTILIZATION OF AN ON-CAMPUS WELL FIELD FOR MULTIDISCIPLINARY GEOLOGICAL INSTRUCTION

In a time of tight budgets and overdeveloped liability consciousness, it’s good for geology programs to have opportunities to conduct meaningful and career enriching on-campus field exercises. And while not every school is endowed with easily accessible rock outcrops, most do have access to groundwater, right beneath their feet. This presentation details the design, installation, and utilization of an on-campus well field as a university-level instructional aid for teaching various subdisciplines of geology. Lesson plans associated with this well field can be used to teach “hands-on” lessons in hydrogeology, stratigraphy, environmental geology, and geophysics classes. Specific field exercises include: collecting water-level measurements, mapping potentiometric surfaces, solving three-point problems, determining hydraulic gradients, determining aquifer hydraulic parameters using slug tests and various pumping tests, exploring groundwater and surface water interconnectivity (using the well field and a nearby on-campus lake), collecting groundwater samples, using “low flow / low impact” sampling techniques, collecting field parameters (dissolved oxygen, pH, temperature, specific conductance, turbidity), and drawing cross sections using geophysical well logs and well cuttings. Many of the exercises teach students “real world” skills that make them more employable as groundwater and environmental professionals. Though this well field is designed for university instruction, similar groundwater wells and/or well fields can be installed at K-12 schools for use with appropriately scaled lesson plans.