Introduction to a Special Issue on Three-dimensional Geological Mapping for Groundwater Applications

Abstract

Modern societies have increasing demands for contaminant remediation and a continued supply of potable water. This is particularly the case in the densely populated and industrialized parts of North America and Europe. Coping with the demand, however, requires optimal geologic mapping and modeling methods, and for hydrogeologists to generate improved model scenarios using the best available geological information. Unfortunately, there is often a lack of collaboration between geologists and hydrogeologists. Therefore, geological complexity and understanding is often under-represented in many groundwater models. This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Maps focusing on three-dimensional (3-D) geologic mapping for groundwater applications. Four articles in the issue are based on papers that were presented at workshops held between 2001 to 2005. The workshops provided venues for researchers to share their expertise in constructing 3-D geological models and to discuss various geological issues pertaining to groundwater and urbanization. Primary topics discussed in the workshops and in these four Journal of Maps articles are basin analysis, data integration and management, three-dimensional geologic model construction, groundwater investigations, and communication. The four papers in this issue demonstrate different philosophical and technical approaches to the development of GIS based 3-D geological models, while the modeling approaches and results reflect various issues and data support problems inherent with model development at various scales, from large regional models, to intermediate scale municipal and county scale models, to site-specific scale.