Abstracts

168 - Deep groundwater systems in southern Ontario: Base of
fresh water, water types, and flow directions
Terry Carter 1 , Dejie Wang 2 , Jordan Clark 3 , Arthur Castillo 4 , & Lee Fortner 4
1
Consulting Geologist, London, Ontario, Canada
2
Ministry of Land and Resources, Beijing, People’s Republic of China
3
Ontario Oil, Gas and Salt Resources Library, London, Ontario, Canada
4
Ministry of Natural Resources and Forestry, London, Ontario, Canada
Between 2008 and 2014 the Petroleum Operations Section of the Ministry of Natural
Resources and Forestry (MNRF) completed a project to identify and map the principal
water-bearing intervals in the Paleozoic bedrock of southern Ontario. After extensive and
prolonged quality control edits, GIS queries of water records in the MNRF petroleum
well database were used to create two map groupings: 17 maps of the static level of water
in selected water-bearing geological formations in the Paleozoic bedrock, and 89 maps of
water types and their geologic and geographic distribution in the bedrock.
In all cases the water contained in Paleozoic bedrock formations and the overlying unconsolidated
sediments in southern Ontario exhibits increasing salinity with depth. There is a
down-dip gradation from fresh water at or near the surface in the drift and shallow bedrock
(