Digitized and Derivative Potentiometric Surface Datasets for the Mississippi River Valley Alluvial Aquifer Extent of Eastern Arkansas, Predevelopment to 2008

The Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer (MRVA) in eastern Arkansas is a major source of groundwater for public, industrial, agricultural, and aquaculture uses. Estimated withdrawals from the MRVA increased from 1,063 million gallons per day in 1965 (Halberg and Stephens, 1966) to 7,252 million gallons per day in 2005 (Holland, 2007). Potentiometric-surface maps, which represent the altitude at which water would stand in tightly cased wells completed at any location within in the study area, are produced to track water level changes over time (Schrader, 2010). This dataset contains 19 collections of digitized potentiometric surfaces, represented as potentiometric contours and rasters derived from those contours, from the early 1900s to 2008, and is loosely confined to the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer extents inside Arkansas.