By Scott T. Prinos

INTRODUCTION

Previous Studies

Except for the West Well Field monitoring network (Lizbeth Britt, Miami-Dade Department of Environmental Resource Management, written commun., 2003), reports of research that document the design of the continuous ground-water level monitoring network in Miami-Dade County are lacking. Throughout the 1939-2001 monitoring period, however, considerable analysis was undertaken on a case-by-case basis to add specific monitoring wells to the network that would meet the monitoring requirements of the county. These analyses were performed cooperatively by the USGS and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Florida Keys Aqueduct Authority, Miami-Dade Department of Environmental Resources Management, South Florida Water Management District, and the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department. The continuous ground-water level monitoring network was designed to: (1) assess the effects of permitted ground-water withdrawals at municipal well fields, and aid in the evaluation of potential changes to water-supply permits; (2) provide areal coverage for periodic water-table contour maps of the county; (3) provide data for hydrologic modeling; (4) evaluate hydroperiod water levels in environmentally sensitive areas, and aid in restoring hydroperiod water levels; (5) evaluate seepage across levees and from canals; and (6) provide near real-time assessments of hydrologic conditions.

More recently, as part of a project to design the USGS cooperative real-time ground-water monitoring network, regression analyses were used to determine which wells provide data that could be used to estimate water levels at other wells in the Biscayne aquifer with a coefficient of determination (R²) from the regression of 0.64 or greater (Prinos and others, 2002). This study identified 8 potential index wells in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties that could be used to provide or estimate water levels for 72 of the 92 wells analyzed in the existing network. The average R² value for this potential network was 0.81; however, the goal of this assessment was to determine which wells were most representative of the network-not to evaluate potential redundancy of data.

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