Aquifer Occurrence in the Fort Payne Formationab

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe Fort Payne Formation of Early Mississippian (Osagean) age crops out over extensive areas of central Tennessee, south‐central Kentucky, and northern Alabama. Specific formation lithologies are known to have been modified locally through weathering into an artesian aquifer along the Eastern Highland Rim of central Tennessee. The shallow aquifer can be divided into two parts; uppermost is a highly permeable chert gravel zone that is in hydraulic communication with a lower zone of interconnected solution cavities within bedrock. The gravel, at depths as great as 24.4 m (80 ft), fines upward into the clay‐sized chert of the upper confining bed. The lower confining bed is the Chattanooga Shale of Late Devonian to Early Mississippian age.Field and petrographic studies of the Fort Payne Formation indicate that the aquifer has developed near the base of the unit. The chert gravel portion of the aquifer has developed from silicified dolowackestones of the Beaver Creek Limestone Member and from interbedded Fort Payne dolostones. The lower portion of the aquifer occurs within preferentially weathered, silicified and non‐silicified dolosiltstone.