Cassandra Shank

Dr. Emma Witt

Groundwater Hydrology - ENSC 5205-001

16 February 2021

Assignment One: Water Budget, Watershed, and Geology

Methodology

In the pursuit of determining the water budget for the North Branch Rancocas Creek, the

watershed that the river intersects with needed to be delineated. To delineate the watershed, the

website USGS StreamStats was utilized. On this website, the creek was located and selected for

delineation. This delineation map can be seen in Figure 1. Once the website delineated the

watershed that it was located in, specific characteristics were selected for further inspection.

These characteristics can be found in Table 1.

An Excel spreadsheet was provided with key information for the watershed. A graph

(Graph 1) was created that showed the amount of discharge that occurred over one hydrological

year. To get more information on the trends in this area, three more graphs were created. One

graph (Graph 2) showed information about the depth to the water table at a given location.

Another graph (Graph 3) depicted the average monthly precipitation in the area, while Graph 4

showed the average monthly potential evapotranspiration.

Using the provided information in ArcMaps, key characteristics were able to be

identified. The land use in the site area was found using the NJDEP Bureau of GIS website. The

aquifer information was provided by Dr. Emma Witt and additional information was gathered on

the NJDEP Bureau of GIS website. Maps were made using ArcMap 10.8.
Figures and Tables

Figure 1. The watershed basin delineation for the North Branch Rancocas Creek located in

Pemberton, New Jersey. This image was collected using the USGS StreamStats website.

Parameter Parameter Description Value

Code

DRNAREA Area that drains to a point on a stream 125 square miles

FOREST Percentage of area covered by forest 55.4%

LC11DEV Percentage of developed (urban) land from NLCD 2011 14.4%

classes 21-24

LC11IMP Average percentage of impervious area determined from 3.14%

NLCD 2011 impervious dataset

POPDENS Basin population density 294 persons /

square mile

STORAGE Percentage of area of storage (lakes, ponds, reservoirs, 29.3%

wetlands, etc.)
Table 1. Characteristics of the watershed delineation collected from the USGS StreamStats

website.
Graph 1. The average monthly discharge (measured in inches) was measured for the 2019-2020

water year.

Graph 2. The average monthly depth to the water table was recorded over the course of a year.
Graph 3. The average monthly precipitation was collected in inches and recorded over the course

of one year.

Graph 4. The average monthly potential evapotranspiration was collected in inches and recorded

for October 2019 until September 2020.

 Months Inputs (in) + Outputs (in) - Total (in)

October 2019 Precipitation: 5.28 Evapotranspiration: 2.241 + 1.97

Discharge: 1.068

November 2019 Precipitation: 1.22 Evapotranspiration: 0.422 - 0.50

Discharge: 1.294

December 2019 Precipitation: 5.16 Evapotranspiration: 0.144 + 2.97

Discharge: 2.047

January 2020 Precipitation: 2.78 Evapotranspiration: 0.195 + 0.55

Discharge: 2.036

February 2020 Precipitation: 2.06 Evapotranspiration: 0.308 - 0.09

Discharge: 1.842

March 2020 Precipitation: 4.39 Evapotranspiration: 0.987 + 1.58

Discharge: 1.824

April 2020 Precipitation: 4.39 Evapotranspiration: 1.403 + 0.85

Discharge: 2.142

May 2020 Precipitation: 1.15 Evapotranspiration: 3.126 - 3.35

Discharge: 1.372

June 2020 Precipitation: 4.57 Evapotranspiration: 5.225 - 1.70

Discharge: 1.042

July 2020 Precipitation: 5.84 Evapotranspiration: 6.682 - 1.77

Discharge: 0.928

August 2020 Precipitation: 5.35 Evapotranspiration: 5.581 - 1.07

Discharge: 0.835

September 2020 Precipitation: 1.92 Evapotranspiration: 3.545 - 2.34

Discharge: 0.717
Table 2. A collection of the inputs and outputs of the watershed from October 2019 until

September 2020.
Graph 5: The monthly change to the water table in inches over the course of one year. This was

measured by taking the amount of precipitation and subtracting that by the sum of the discharge

and evapotranspiration.
Map 1: The land uses of Burlington County, New Jersey are shown on the map above. There

were a large variety of land use categories, and those categories specifically coded on this map

were thought to be influential to groundwater. Land uses were found on the NJDEP Bureau of

GIS (a).
Map 2: The different aquifers in New Jersey are presented in the map above. The types of

aquifers were retrieved from the NJDEP Bureau of GIS (b) (c) (d).
Conclusions

From the information obtained through the GIS mapping and analysis of the North Branch

Rancocas Creek groundwater data, the water budget changed over the course of the year. When

there is a lot of plant productivity, the water budget decreases. During this time, the

evapotranspiration is using a decent amount of water supply in the soil in order to aid plant

productivity. During the other months, the water budget seems to fluctuate due to the amount of

precipitation.

In addition to the precipitation, evapotranspiration, and the natural discharge that are

involved in a water budget, pumping is also a factor. Groundwater pumping takes a considerable

amount of water from the water budget. By not accounting for this depletion, it would alter the

water budget in this scenario to be of lesser value.

References

Bedrock Aquifers in New Jersey. 2019. NJDEP Bureau of GIS (b). Retrieved from:

https://gisdata-njdep.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/bedrock-aquifers-in-new-jersey

Groundwater Decline and Depletion. N.d. USGS. Retrieved from:

https://www.usgs.gov/special-topic/water-science-school/science/groundwater-decline-an

d-depletion?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects

Land Use/Land Cover of New Jersey 2012 Generalized (Download). 2019. NJDEP

Bureau of GIS (a). Retrieved from:

https://gisdata-njdep.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/land-use-land-cover-of-new-jersey-20

12-generalized-download

Surficial Aquifers in New Jersey. 2019. NJDEP Bureau of GIS (c). Retrieved from:

https://gisdata-njdep.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/surficial-aquifers-in-new-jersey

Sole-Source Aquifers in New Jersey. 2019. NJDEP Bureau of GIS (d). Retrieved from:

https://gisdata-njdep.opendata.arcgis.com/datasets/sole-source-aquifers-in-new-jersey