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GWRP > Regional Groundwater Availability Studies Geospatial Data > Floridan Aquifer System Floridan Aquifer System![[Image: Floridan Aquifer System location map.]](./Floridan.jpg "Location of Floridan Aquifer System")
The Floridan aquifer system (FAS) underlies an area of approximately 100,000 square miles beneath all of Florida and some of the less densely populated parts of southeastern Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina. The FAS is a sequence of Tertiary carbonate rocks that generally thickens seaward from the northern boundary of the system.The total thickness of the carbonate rocks ranges from approximately 100 feet at the updip limit to over 3,300 feet. Over roughly half of its extent, the FAS is an unconfined to thinly confined karst aquifer. Where the system is confined it is overlain by a very leaky upper confining unit and the Surficial aquifer system. The upper confining unit consists of several hundred feet of low-permeability clastic sediments and fine-grained lower-permeability limestone. At a regional scale, permeable rocks in the upper and lower parts of the FAS are grouped into the Upper and Lower Floridan aquifers units, respectively. The Upper and Lower Floridan aquifer units are separated by either the Bucatunna clay confining unit, the Lisbon-Avon Park composite unit, or the Middle Avon Park composite unit depending on location. The FAS behaves as one aquifer over much of its extent, though rocks of the confining and composite units create hydrologic separation between the Upper Floridan and Lower Floridan sub-regionally. A recently updated hydrogeologic framework is published in USGS Professional Paper 1807, entitled 'Revised hydrogeologic framework of the Floridan aquifer system in Florida and parts of Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina.The revised framework is a regional work product intended for regional and subregional investigations (1,000 to greater than 10,000 square miles), rather than site-scale (less than 1 square mile) investigations intended for regulatory purposes. This report describes in detail the revised mapping of the system. The companion report for Professional Paper 1807, USGS Data Series 926, entitled, 'Digital surfaces and thicknesses of selected hydrogeologic units of the Floridan aquifer system in Florida and parts of Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina,' fully documents all of the spatial datasets supplemental to the framework of this karst system, including locations and historic magnitude of springs. The USGS Data Series 669 entitled, 'Tabulated Transmissivity and Storage Properties of the Floridan Aquifer System in Florida and Parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama,' provides a database of all furnished aquifer test records and results of USGS aquifer test compiled from multiple State, Federal, and local agencies. USGS Scientific Investigation Map 3204, entitled, 'Transmissivity of the upper Floridan aquifer in Florida and parts of Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama,' provides a transmissivity map of the FAS. All hydrogeologic framework data layers and additional data described in Professional Paper 1807 and Data Series 926 can be downloaded from either a geodatabase, shapefiles, or ASCII grids. Links to the metadata describing selected hydrogeologic framework data layers are shown below (see Explanation of spatial data formats). The metadata files listed below represent a subset of the spatial datasets documented in these reports.
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U.S. Department of the Interior |
U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://water.usgs.gov/ogw/gwrp/activities/gspdata/Studies/Floridan.html
Page Contact Information: Contact the Groundwater Resources Program
Page Last Modified: Tuesday, 03-Jan-2017 20:45:30 EST
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