Metadata for Montana Groundwater Information Center Water Well Data, 2011 Metadata for Montana Groundwater Information Center Water Well Data, 2011

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Identification Information:

Citation:

Originator: Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology (MBMG)

Publication date: 07/13/2011

Title: Montana Groundwater Information Center Water Well Data, 2011

Publication place: Helena, Montana
Publisher: Montana State Library

Other citation details:

The former name of this data set on the NRIS web site was "gwicwells"

Larger Work Citation:

Title: Montana Groundwater Information Center Water Well Data
Online linkage: http://mslapps.mt.gov/Geographic_Information/Data/DataList/datalist_Details.aspx?did={B40FCBD4-DA34-483A-A8C9-F9C1E95F7A21}

Browse graphic file name: https://ftpgeoinfo.msl.mt.gov/Documents/Maps/Thumbnails/20031113_424_thumb.jpg

Browse graphic file name: gwic.gif

Abstract:

This data set contains point locations and selected attributes for water wells within Montana abstracted from databases maintained at the Ground-Water Information Center (GWIC) at the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology. Original data sources include water rights filings, water well logs, visits to water wells, and publications of the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology, the U.S. Geological Survey, and others. The databases are maintained at the Ground-Water Information Center. Ground-water site locations and selected fields are forwarded annually to the State Library.

Fields provided in this data set are a subset of the fields available in the database at the GWIC. Additional data for ground-water resources in Montana can be obtained from the GWIC website at http://mbmggwic.mtech.edu.

Purpose:

Data from GWIC are useful for describing the ground-water resources of Montana, land use planning, determination of drilling depths, and understanding ground-water flow.

Time period of content:

Beginning date: 1860
Ending date: 07/09/2011
Currentness reference: ground condition

Status:

Progress: Current with receipts of new water well logs
Maintenance and update frequency:: The GWIC database is active and thousands of data corrections and thousands of new well logs are added to the system annually. Updates of the database are forwarded annually to the State Library.

Access constraints: None

Use constraints:

These data are currently intended to provide information on the distribution of wells in general rather than the locations of specific wells. Most of the well locations are derived from 1:250,000 scale maps and individual well identities should not be shown at map scales larger than this.

Well data is updated continually at GWIC, and individual records at the State Library may be obsolete. Current data for any well, or updated data sets, can be obtained directly from the GWIC website at http://mbmggwic.mtech.edu.

The Montana State Library provides this product/service for informational purposes only. The Library did not produce it for, nor is it suitable for legal, engineering, or surveying purposes. Consumers of this information should review or consult the primary data and information sources to ascertain the viability of the information for their purposes. The Library provides these data in good faith but does not represent or warrant its accuracy, adequacy, or completeness. In no event shall the Library be liable for any incorrect results or analysis; any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages to any party; or any lost profits arising out of or in connection with the use or the inability to use the data or the services provided. The Library makes these data and services available as a convenience to the public, and for no other purpose. The Library reserves the right to change or revise published data and/or services at any time.

Point of contact:

Thomas Patton
Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology
1300 West Park Street
Butte, MT 59701
Telephone: 406-496-4153
E-Mail: tpatton@mtech.edu

Data Quality Information:

Attribute accuracy report:

New well log data are entered into the database from original documents and verified one time during the data entry process. Historic data are verified against historic documents on a county by county basis. Due to work loads, well records for all Montana counties have not been verified against the original documents. To view the current status of verification, go to the On-Line Help section of the GWIC website at http://mbmggwic.mtech.edu.

Completeness report:

Well locations in GWIC do not represent the locations of all water wells in Montana. Although the total number of water wells constructed in the state is unknown, GWIC locations are thought to represent 50-60% of all water wells.

Horizontal Positional Accuracy Report:

Unless otherwise noted in the GWIC database by the presence of a site visit record, coordinates are derived from unverified locations provided by the landowner or water well driller. Significant errors in location occur in the unverified data. Points with verified locations are generally within about 10 of feet of their true position. The GEOMETHOD attribute indicates how the coordinates were obtained and are an indicator of the positional accuracy of each point.

The meaning of commonly used GEOMETHOD codes are as follows:
-- TRS-TWN: generated from township, range, section, and tract using township corners digitized by the U.S. Geological Survey in the 1970s from 1:250,000 scale maps.
-- TRS-SEC: generated from township, range, section, and tract using section corners digitized from 1:24,000 maps.
-- NAV-GPS: uncorrected Global Positioning System locations.
-- SURGPS: corrected Global Positioning System locations.
-- MAP: digitized from 1:24,000 USGS Topographic maps

NAV-GPS, SUR-GPS, and MAP represent confirmed locations. TRS-SEC and TRS-TWN represent unconfirmed locations if the number of tract designations in the TRACT field is less than 4 and there is no site visit record in the GWIC database. A complete description of the GEOMETHOD flags can be found in the On-Line Help section of the GWIC website at http://mbmggwic.mtech.edu.

The coordinates for the majority of the wells were obtained with the TRS-TWN method. Coordinates in selected counties (Flathead, Lake, Mineral, Missoula, Ravalli, Yellowstone, and Treasure) were obtained using the TRS-SEC method. However, in both cases the greatest source of horizontal error is the original landowner/water well driller's ability to correctly fill out the township, range, section, and tract description.

Coordinates converted from township, range, section, and tract descriptions generally fall within the boundaries of the smallest described tract. Section based conversions are more accurate than township based conversions because the section corners used in section based conversions have been digitized, and not interpolated from township corners.

Lineage:

Source information:

Originator:: Ground-Water Assessment Program at the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology
Publication date: 07/13/2011
Title: Montana Ground-Water Information Center Water well log data
Type of source media: paper records
Source contribution: The data set was generated from this source.
Beginning date: 1860
Ending date: 07/09/2011

Process step:

Water well log data are entered into the GWIC database from original paper documents and verified to match original data during the data entry process. Some well records are created from visits to wells discovered during field work by various projects at the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology. For well records created from site visits, there will be no paper well log at the Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology and the database will only contain information discovered during the field visit. The database is corrected when errors are discovered through use of data or by outside data users.

Process step:

Coordinates are assigned to GWIC records using a variety of methods as described by the GEOMETHOD flag in the data retrieval. See the description of common GEOMETHOD flags used in GWIC in the Horizontal_Positional_Accuracy_Report section of this document.

TRS-TWN and TRS-SEC based coordinates are calculated automatically at the time a record is first filed or the location is modified. MAP, NAV-GPS, and SUR-GPS coordinates are posted to the database and remained unchanged until an error may be discovered. At that time corrected coordinates for the point would be entered into the database and the township, range, section and tract modified to match the digitized or GPS coordinates.

Spatial Data Organization Information:

Point and vector object information:

SDTS object type: Entity point

SDTS object count: 226536

Spatial Reference Information:

Horizontal coordinate system definition:

Grid coordinate system name: State Plane Coordinate System

SPCS zone identifier: 2500

Lambert conformal conic:

Standard parallel: 45.000000
Standard parallel: 49.000000
Longitude of central meridian: -109.500000
Latitude of projection origin: 44.250000
False easting: 600000.000000
False northing: 0.000000

Planar distance units: meters

Geodetic model:

Horizontal datum name: North American Datum of 1983
Ellipsoid name: Geodetic Reference System 80
Semi-major axis: 6378137.000000
Denominator of flattening ratio: 298.257222

Entity and Attribute Information:

Entity type label: GWIC_Wells_20110713.dbf

Entity type definition: Point feature class

Attribute label: FID

Attribute definition: Shapefile sequence number

Attribute label: Shape

Attribute definition: Feature geometry

Attribute label: MNUMBER

Attribute definition: Unique number that links all GWIC records together

Attribute label: DNRC_NO

Attribute definition:: Water right number assigned to well/site by the Department of Natural Resources and Conservation

Attribute label: SITE_NAME

Attribute definition:: Name of the well/site. Most often the name of the land owner for whom the well was originally drilled

Attribute label: LATITUDE

Attribute definition: Latitude of well/site

Attribute label: LONGITUDE

Attribute definition: Longitude of well/site

Attribute label: GEOMETHOD

Attribute definition: Method used to determine the latitude and longitude

Attribute label: DATUM

Attribute definition: Geodetic datum for the latitude and longitude

Attribute label: TOWNSHIP

Attribute definition:: Township number of the public land survey township in which the well/site is located

Attribute label: RANGE

Attribute definition:: Range number of the public land survey township in which the well/site is located

Attribute label: ISP_SECT

Attribute definition:: Public land survey section number in which the well is located

Attribute label: TRACT

Attribute definition:: The tracts (from largest to smallest) that describe the location of the well/site within the section

Attribute label: COUNTY

Attribute definition: County in Montana where the well/site is located

Attribute label: TYPE

Attribute definition:: Whether the site is a water well, petroleum well, borehole, spring, or other site type

Attribute label: TOT_DEPT

Attribute definition: Total depth of the well in feet

Attribute label: PWL

Attribute definition:: The distance in feet below land surface the water is found during pumping

Attribute label: SWL

Attribute definition:: The distance in feet below land surface the water is found when the well is not pumping

Attribute label: RECOV_WL

Attribute definition:: The "recovery" water level (in feet below casing top) measured by the driller after a production test has been completed

Attribute label: YIELD

Attribute definition: The reported yield of the well in gallons per minute

Attribute label: TEST_TYPE

Attribute definition: The method by which the yield was determined

Attribute label: TEST_DUR

Attribute definition: The duration of the performance test in hours

Attribute label: RECOV_TM

Attribute definition:: The length of time in hours after production stopped that the recovery water level was measured

Attribute label: DRILLSET

Attribute definition:: The distance in feet below ground surface that the drill stem was placed during a production test using air to lift the water from the well

Attribute label: WHO_DRILL

Attribute definition: The name of the well driller or contractor

Attribute label: LIC_NO

Attribute definition:: The water well driller or water well contractor license number

Attribute label: COMP_DATE

Attribute definition: The date that the well was completed

Attribute label: PWS_ID

Attribute definition:: A number consisting of the Department of Environmental Quality's identifier for a public water supply (5 digits) concatenated with the source number for the well/site in the public water supply (3 digits)

Attribute label: GWSI_ID

Attribute definition:: A 15 digit number that is the U.S. Geological Survey's National Water Information System identifier for the well/site

Attribute label: DATA_SOUR

Attribute definition: The source of data for the GWIC record

Attribute label: WQDATA

Attribute definition:: Flag indicating whether GWIC has water quality data available for the well

Attribute label: HYDROGRAPH

Attribute definition:: Flag indicating whether GWIC has hydrograph data available for the well

Distribution Information:

Distributor:

Montana State Library
PO Box 201800
Helena, MT 59620-1800
Telephone: 406-444-5354
TDD/TTY telephone: Montana Relay 711
Fax: 406-444-0266
E-Mail: geoinfo@mt.gov

Resource description: Offline Data

Distribution liability:

The Montana State Library provides this product/service for informational purposes only. The Library did not produce it for, nor is it suitable for legal, engineering, or surveying purposes. Consumers of this information should review or consult the primary data and information sources to ascertain the viability of the information for their purposes. The Library provides these data in good faith but does not represent or warrant its accuracy, adequacy, or completeness. In no event shall the Library be liable for any incorrect results or analysis; any direct, indirect, special, or consequential damages to any party; or any lost profits arising out of or in connection with the use or the inability to use the data or the services provided. The Library makes these data and services available as a convenience to the public, and for no other purpose. The Library reserves the right to change or revise published data and/or services at any time.

Metadata Reference Information:

Metadata date: 04/13/2015

Metadata review date: 07/13/2011

Metadata review date: 08/22/2001

Metadata contact:

Thomas Patton
Program Leader, Montana Ground-Water Assessment Program
Montana Bureau of Mines and Geology
1300 West Park Street
Butte, MT 59701
Telephone: 406-496-4153
E-Mail: tpatton@mtech.edu