DOI: 10.5066/p9f0x0yf
title: Surface and subsurface geologic data from previous USGS studies of the Gulf Coast region, south-central United States

description: This dataset captures in digital form the results of previously published U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Water Mission Area studies related to water resource assessment of Cenozoic strata and unconsolidated deposits within the Mississippi Embayment and the Gulf Coastal Plain of the south-central United States. The data are from reports published from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s by the Gulf Coast Regional Aquifer-System Analysis (RASA) studies and in 2008 by the Mississippi Embayment Regional Aquifer Study (MERAS). These studies, and the data presented here, describe the geologic and hydrogeologic units of the Mississippi embayment, Texas coastal uplands, and the coastal lowlands aquifer systems, south-central United States. This dataset supercedes a previously released dataset on USGS ScienceBase (https://doi.org/10.5066/P9JOHHO6) that was found to contain errors. Following initial release of data, several types of errors were recognized in the well downhole stratigraphic data. Most of these errors were the result of unrecognized improper results in the optical character recognition conversion from the original source report. All downhole data have been thoroughly checked and corrected, data tables were revised, and new point feature classes were created for well location and WellHydrogeologicUnit. GIS data related to the geologic map and subsurface contours were correct in original release and are retained here in original form; only the well data have been revised from the initial data release. The Mississippi embayment, Texas coastal uplands, and coastal lowlands aquifer systems underlie about 487,000 km2 in parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas from the Rio Grande on the west to the western part of Florida on the east. The previously published investigations divided the Cenozoic strata and unconsolidated deposits within the Mississippi Embayment and the Gulf Coastal Plain into 11 major geologic units, typically mapped at the group level, with several additional units at the formational level, which were aggregated into six hydrogeologic units within the Mississippi embayment and Texas coastal uplands and into five hydrogeologic units within the Coastal Lowlands aquifer system. These units include the Mississippi River Valley alluvial aquifer, Vicksburg-Jackson confining unit (contained within the Jackson Group), the upper Claiborne aquifer (contained within the Claiborne Group), the middle Claiborne confining unit (contained within the Claiborne Group), the middle Claiborne aquifer (contained within the Claiborne Group), the lower Claiborne confining unit (contained within the Claiborne Group), the lower Claiborne aquifer (contained within the Claiborne Group), the middle Wilcox aquifer (contained within the Wilcox Group), the lower Wilcox aquifer (contained within the Wilcox Group), and the Midway confining unit (contained within the Midway Group). This dataset includes structure contour and thickness data digitized from plates in two reports, borehole data compiled from two reports, and a geologic map digitized from a report plate. Structure contour and thickness maps of hydrogeologic units in the Mississippi Embayment and Texas coastal uplands had been previously digitized by a USGS study from georeferenced images of altitude and thickness contours in USGS Professional Paper 1416-B (Hosman and Weiss, 1991). These data, which were stored on the USGS Water Mission Area’s NSDI node, were downloaded, reformatted, and attributed for present dataset. Structure contour maps of geologic units in the Mississippi Embayment and Texas coastal uplands were digitized and attributed from georeferenced images of altitude and thickness contours in USGS Professional Paper 1416-G (Hosman, 1996) for this data release. Borehole data in this data release include data compiled for USGS Gulf Coast RASA studies in which a scanned version of a USGS report (Wilson and Hosman, 1987) was converted through optical character recognition and then manipulated to form a data table, and from borehole data compiled for the subsequent MERAS study (Hart and Clark, 2008) where an Excel workbook was downloaded and manipulated for use in a GIS and as part of this dataset. The digital geologic map was digitized from Plate 4 of USGS Professional Paper 1416-G (Hosman, 1996) and then attributed according to the USGS National Cooperative Geologic Mapping Program’s GeMS digital geologic map schema. The digital dataset a digital geologic map with contacts and faults and geologic map polygons distributed as separate feature classes within a geographic information system geodatabase. The geologic map database is a digital representation of the geologic compilation of the Guld Coast region originally published as Plate 4 of USGS Professional Paper 1416-G (Hosman, 1996). The dataset includes a second geographic information system geodatabase that contain digital structure contour and thickness data as polyline feature classes for all of the hydrogeologic units contoured in USGS Professional Paper 1416-B (Hosman and Weiss, 1991) and all of the geologic units contoured in USGS Professional Paper 1416-G (Hosman, 1996). The geodatabase also contains separate point feature classes that portray borehole location and the depth to hydrogeologic units penetrated downhole for all boreholes compiled for the USGS RASA sturdies by Wilson and Hosman (1987) and for the subsequent USGS MERAS study (Hart and Clark, 2008). Borehole data are provided in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that includes separate TABs for well location and tabulation of the depths to top and base of hydrogeologic units intercepted downhole, in a format suitable for import into a relational database. Each of the geographic information system geodatabases include non-spatial tables that describe the sources of geologic or hydrogeologic information, a glossary of terms, and a description of units. Also included is a Data Dictionary that duplicates the Entity and Attribute information contained in the metadata file. To maximize usability, spatial data are also distributed as shapefiles and tabular data are distributed as ascii text files in comma separated values (CSV) format. The landing page to for this data release contains a url to an external web resource where the downhole well data from the data release are rendered in 3D and can be interactively viewed by the user.