How it works
An unlabeled aquifer diagram to print: a hillside cut open from the ridge to the stream. Twelve parts wait for a name. Two have a short line to write on; the other ten names go straight on the drawing.
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Six names on the ground itself
The bold line with a small triangle is the water table. Write unsaturated zone above it and unconfined aquifer in the dotted ground below it. The thin band of long dashes is the confining layer, and the dotted layer under that band is the confined aquifer. The dashed line sloping across the whole drawing is the potentiometric surface.
Six names on wells and water
Of the three shafts, the one on high ground is the artesian well, the short middle one is the well, and the one in the valley, spilling water, is the flowing artesian well. Recharge goes beside the arrows under the rain cloud. The two short lines are for the spring and the stream.
- Word bank: artesian well, confined aquifer, confining layer, flowing artesian well, potentiometric surface, recharge, spring, stream, unconfined aquifer, unsaturated zone, water table, well.
- Water leaves an aquifer three ways, and all three are on the sheet: springs, seepage into streams, and wells.
Questions and answers
What is an aquifer?
A water-bearing rock that readily transmits water to wells and springs, in the words of the US Geological Survey. The water fills the void spaces in the rock, so the ground holds water and still stays solid.
How fast does groundwater move through an aquifer?
It depends on the material. The US Geological Survey says that in some permeable materials groundwater may move several meters in a day, and in other places only a few centimeters in a century. It moves very slowly through clay and shale.
Where does the word artesian come from?
From Artois in France, where the best known flowing artesian wells were drilled in the Middle Ages. The sheet has two artesian wells: the one in the valley flows, and the one on high ground does not.
What is left off the unlabeled aquifer diagram?
The saturated zone has no place of its own: in this drawing it is the same ground as the unconfined aquifer. A cone of depression, a capillary fringe and a perched aquifer are not drawn, and the tree and the cloud take no name.
Does the unlabeled aquifer diagram have an answer key?
Yes. The key is the same hillside with all twelve names written where they belong.