Digital data sets that describe aquifer characteristics of the Elk City aquifer in western Oklahoma

This data set consists of digitized aquifer boundaries for the
Elk City aquifer in western Oklahoma. The aquifer covers an area
of approximately 193,000 acres and supplies ground water for
irrigation, domestic, and industrial purposes in Beckham,
Custer, Roger Mills, and Washita Counties along the divide
between the Washita and Red River basins.

The Elk City aquifer consists of the Elk City Sandstone and
overlying terrace deposits, made up of clay, silt, sand and
gravel, and dune sands in the eastern part and sand and gravel
of the Ogallala Formation (or High Plains aquifer) in the
western part of the aquifer. The Elk City aquifer is unconfined
and composed of very friable sandstone, lightly cemented with
clay, calcite, gypsum, or iron oxide. Most of the grains are
fine-sized quartz but the grain size ranges from clay to cobble
in the aquifer. The Doxey Shale underlies the Elk City aquifer
and acts as a confining unit, restricting the downward movement
of ground water.

The aquifer boundaries were digitized from a photocopy of a
paper map from a ground-water modeling thesis of Elk City
aquifer published at a scale of 1:63,360.