Proceedings of the Third USGS Modeling Conference, June 7?11, 2010, Broomfield, Colorado: Understanding and Predicting for a Changing World

Increasingly complex groundwater management requires more accurate hydrogeologic frameworks for groundwater models used in resource management. These complex issues have created the demand for innovative approaches to data collection. In complicated terrains, groundwater modelers benefit from continuous high-resolution geologic maps and their related hydrogeologic-parameter estimates. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and its partners have collabo-rated to use airborne geophysical surveys for near-continuous coverage of areas of the North Platte River valley in west-ern Nebraska. The objective of the surveys was to map the aquifers and bedrock topography of the area to help improve the understanding of groundwater-surface water relations to be used in water management decisions. Frequency-domain helibourne electromagnetic (HEM) surveys were completed, using a unique survey flight line design, to collect resistiv-ity data that can be related to lithologic information to refine groundwater model inputs.