Central Valley Groundwater Hydrology Basin EarthCache
Central Valley Groundwater Hydrology Basin
-
Difficulty:
-
-
Terrain:
-
Size: 
(other)
Please note Use of geocaching.com services is subject to the terms and conditions
in our disclaimer.
There is a lot of groundwater under the Central Valley, but where does it come from?
The answer to this is that there is a great underwater reservoir under our feet. This reservoir stores all of the groundwater before it continues to the ocean. However, it is not a reservoir in the sense of the word that we are used to using. Instead of it being a giant lake of water. It is simply an area where the groundwaters travel through the bedrock is slowed down so much that it is barely moving. The reason it moves so slow is because the grain of the bedrock becomes finer and finer and the water can move only a few molecules at a time is some places.
Over time, as man has taken away more and more groundwater for his use. The basin has gotten slowly emptied. This emptying is why recently many collecting ponds have been built in the area. These collecting ponds collect rainwater and let it naturally siphon down into the basin to refill it. However, these basins must have very specific soil configurates to allow the water to sink into the ground. This includes large or medium grain sizes in the soil, a lower topography than the surronding area, and being away from things that drain the groundwater like vegetation.
To get credit for this cache email me the answers to the following questions:
1. The GC code and name of this cache.
2. The number of people in your group.
3. Describe the consistancy of the soil in this collecting pond.
4. About how deep is it?
5. Are there any nearby things that might absorb groundwater?
6. How might these factors affect groundwater absorbtion?
Additional Hints
(No hints available.)
Treasures
You'll collect a digital Treasure from one of these collections when you find and log this geocache:
Loading Treasures