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Geology topics

M.S. McBride

Publications and source records attributed to M.S. McBride.

3 recordsLinked to original sources
USGS1975

Ground water for irrigation in the Viking Basin, west-central Minnesota

The Viking Basin consists of six glacial outwash areas in Douglas, Ottertail, and Todd Counties, west-central Minnesota. Total area is 340 square miles (880 square kilometres). Soils are sandy and excessively well-drained. Crops grown on the outwash would benefit from supplemental irrigation. Irrigation supplies can be obtained from wells in the surface outwash aquifer in significant parts of the large outwash areas near Carlos and Parkers Prairie and the small outwash area near Clotho. Irrigation supplies are unlikely in the outwash areas near Alexandria, Urbank, and Rose City. Major use of ground water for irrigation may lower ground-water levels sufficiently to affect lake and marsh levels and streamflow out of the irrigation areas. Water from the outwash is of excellent chemical quality for irrigation.

Minnesota↗
USGS1975

The distribution of seepage within lakebeds

The mutual exchange of water between lakes and contiguous permeable ground-water bodies, which are thin relative to the diameter of the lakes, was modeled digitally. A significant rate of seepage was found to extend only a relatively short distance from shore, thus forming a narrow band around the lake's perimeter. This near-shore concentration of seepage is an effect only of the geometry of the ground-water flow system, which is governed by the geometry of the body of permeable material, the spatial distribution of permeability within it, and the form of the water table. Near-shore seepage occurs independently of the presence of fine-grained, lowpermeability sedimentary bottom materials in the central part of the lake. Digital modeling indicates that the velocity of seepage generally decreases at an exponential rate as a function of distance from shore. Field measurements of seepage rates through the bottom of Lake Sallie, west-central Minnesota, confirm the model results by demonstrating that both the near-shore seepage band and the exponential decrease in seepage velocity actually exist.

Minnesota, Wisconsin↗