The WSGS will complete its series of groundwater studies across the state with a final report on the rivers of northeast Wyoming, slated for release in 2018.  

WSGS hydrogeologists study the distribution, flow and quality of Wyoming’s water underground. This information is then complied, mapped and published by the agency.

The WSGS has produced five major technical reports covering Wyoming’s major river basins in the state, including the Snake/Salt River Basin, Bear River Basin, Wind/Bighorn Basin, Greater Green River Basin and Platte River Basin. The final groundwater study will include the Powder, Tongue, Belle Fourche, Cheyenne, Niobrara and Little Missouri rivers.

These projects are funded by the Wyoming Water Development Office and include groundwater data, maps and analyses. The scientific information compiled for these studies are then incorporated into the state’s major water plans. Such collaboration between state agencies is important for managing the future use of Wyoming's water resources.

The WSGS studies cover the geologic conditions of the water basins, water quality, and the natural storage of water in the underground aquifers. Locally, water from snowmelt infiltrates through the ground to recharge the underlying aquifers that residents use for their groundwater supplies.

Groundwater is especially important in the arid West where surface water is not as ample as in other parts of the country. Both groundwater and surface water provide freshwater for a wide variety of uses, from the water we drink to water used by livestock and wildlife. 

Wyoming is an important headwaters state that supplies this finite resource to some of the nation’s largest rivers. The state’s mountain snowpack is an important source of natural water flows that ultimately discharge into the Colorado, Missouri and Colombia Rivers as well as the Great Salt Lake Basin.

Check out the new WSGS Summary Report on Wyoming’s Groundwater Resource, a four-page synopsis with maps and information.

“Wyoming is a geologic showplace, a panorama of windswept basin floors and imposing mountains.”

~ Samual Howell Knight “Doc”

(To view a video of one Dr. Knight’s final lectures on Wyoming geology, click here. Courtesy of the UW Dept. of Geology and Geophysics.)

Known as “Mr. Geology of Wyoming,” Dr. Sam Knight was a professor and head of the geology department at the University of Wyoming until he retired in 1963. Knight taught more than 10,000 students throughout his career and was known to them as “Doc.”

In 1925, Knight established the UW Science Camp, a geological camp in the Medicine Bow Mountains west of Laramie that attracted students from all over the country. The camp was named after him in 1966. Knight continued teaching as professor emeritus until 1966. During his 60 years at UW, he expanded the geology department and helped make it a nationally recognized program.

Knight was famous for his 3-D drawings, and his ability to draw a perfect circle— freehand— on the classroom blackboard. His “chalk talks” became well known with his use of colored chalk to draw block drawings that vividly depicted and expounded on the physical evolution of Wyoming he discussed during his classes. The following text details a “chalk talk” by Knight, an excerpt by Brainerd Mears (1990).

Knight lectured on how Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas advanced and retreated across the continental platform, depositing sediments. As the Cretaceous seas withdrew, “broad-backed anticlines arose and wide synclines subsided” to initiate the Cenozoic structural framework of Wyoming’s mountains and basins.

The rising mountains were eroded, exposing the Precambrian basement complex in their cores. Concurrently, the basins were filled with debris from the mountains, greatly supplemented by “vast clouds of volcanic ash drifting in from remote sources.”

Subsequent cycles of erosion, transportation, and deposition modified the late Tertiary landscape. Near the conclusion of his presentation Knight said, “ice sculpted the final scene” as Pleistocene glaciers flowing down pre-existing stream valleys in the mountains scoured great U-shaped troughs and deposited hummocky horseshoe-shaped moraines on the adjacent plains.

Generalized Geologic Map of Wyoming (pdf download)