Assessing the Effect of Pleistocene Glaciation on the Water Supply of Eastern Wisconsin

Along the entire eastern portion of Wisconsin the primary municipal water supply aquifer is the confined Paleozoic sandstone aquifer. From a water supply/water planning perspective, it is important to know whether or not freshwater pumped from this aquifer is being replenished by modern recharge or whether it represents a finite resource emplaced during the Pleistocene. This project investigated the recharge history of the deep sandstone aquifer along the eastern edge of Wisconsin from Green Bay to Milwaukee. Knowledge of the recharge provenance is of paramount importance to developing strategies for long-term management. Pleistocene recharge would have been controlled by highly variable factors involving ice advance and retreat as well as permafrost formation and ice-induced pressure heads that likely drove recharge at rates that were much higher than at present.

Primary users of the information developed during this project will include water supply managers responsible for making long term water management decisions. In addition, the scientific community will be interested in the paleoclimatic information inherent to the noble gas temperature record and the companion 18O record. Information on subglacial meltwater recharge is also of critical importance to the understanding of glacial movement in general and the occurrence of periodic glacial surges especially in the context of global warming