Site Maps

The first and most striking difficulty we encountered was finding the monitoring wells themselves. The typical well is located some 50 to 100 yards off of an unpaved road along a trail marked by red flagging tape and a wooden or plastic stake. We were provided with written directions, NAD27 coordinates, and a handheld GPS, and a field tour to a selection of the sites to assist us with their location, yet we found ourselves entirely unfamiliar with the areas and distances in question.

Thus we began by preparing site maps. First the NAD27 well location table was transformed into the more commonly used NAD83 format. We obtained georeferenced topographical survey maps and transportation layers from RGIS for the area in question. After appropriately labeling the wells and major roads, we prepared and printed a series of 'views' - a large scale view including all the wells and several smaller, more detailed views. These maps have both proved helpful in field navigation and provided a template upon which to build other documents.