Potential structural barriers to ground-water flow, Death Valley regional ground-water flow system, Nevada and California

This digital dataset defines the surface traces of regional geologic structures designated as potential ground-water flow barriers in an approximately 45,000 square-kilometer area of the Death Valley regional ground-water flow system (DVRFS) in southern Nevada and California. Most geologic structures representing potential flow barriers were faults that were identified on the basis of length, offset, type of slip, orientation with respect to predominate ground-water flow directions, the location of springs, abrupt water level offsets, and hydraulic characteristics (Sweetkind and others, 2004). A subset of the potential ground-water flow barriers was incorporated into a transient ground-water flow model of the DVRFS (Faunt and others, 2004). This model is the most recent in a number of regional-scale models developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to support investigations at the Nevada Test Site (NTS) and at Yucca Mountain, Nevada (see "Larger Work Citation", Chapter A, page 8).