Print this pageAbstract: The
Kern Plateau: A Potential Extra-basinal Source of 
Groundwater
Recharge
to the Indian Wells Valley
HOWARD, P. A., E. K. OEHLSCHLAGER, J. GILLICK, J. MCALLE, A. T. SHERMAN, J. R. OSTDICK, D. C. STEWARD, J. M. GILLESPIE, and G. D. THYNE
Hydrogeologic studies
by graduate and undergraduate students at California State University Bakersfield
suggest that high quality groundwater in the southwest Indian Wells Valley
alluvial aquifer is chemically related to surface waters from the Kern
Plateau. The valley's groundwater chemistry does not resemble lower quality
surface water in the adjacent Sierran drainages. The Kern Plateau lies
outside the valley's drainage basin high in the southern Sierra Nevada
mountains. An equipotential map of the southeastern Sierra shows that a
head differential of 6400 feet may be driving Kern Plateau waters to the
Indian Wells Valley through a series of northeast and northwest-trending
faults and fractures that are visible as lineaments on aerial and satellite
photography. Field observations in several eastern Sierran canyons adjacent
to the valley indicate that some fractures in the crystalline bedrock do
control surface and groundwater
flow.
Search and Discovery Article #90945©1997 AAPG Pacific Section Meeting, Bakersfield, California