GEOLOGIC HAZARDS

Deep-Basin-Structure Data

The deep-basin-structure database includes selected logs of deep-water wells and oil and gas/geothermal exploration boreholes, and deep seismic reflection and refraction sections. We included only logs of boreholes and wells that encountered bedrock or are near wells that encountered bedrock in Wasatch Front valleys from Weber County, south to Utah County. Two good-quality lithologic logs west of Brigham City in Box Elder County are included, although no other logs for that area have been compiled yet. Deep geophysical data consist mostly of publicly available oil exploration seismic sections and are limited to Salt Lake Valley, Great Salt Lake, and the eastern shore area of Great Salt Lake.

The deep-basin well data are summarized in an Excel spreadsheet that contains general location, source, and depth information. Individual logs are available as Adobe PDF format scans of delimited text files or graphic logs. The data were plotted from coordinates or figures in referenced reports, and in many cases locations are not precise and are limited by original map scales. Most of the water-well locations were supplied by the Utah Division of Water Rights (UDWR) as a GIS shapefile. The locations are not precise and have not been verified. In many cases, location coordinates may represent a general site locality rather than individual test locations.

For Salt Lake Valley, borehole and well logs are from a variety of sources, including data compiled by Radkins (1990) for Salt Lake County; logs from Case (1985); logs from various deeper geothermal, oil, and gas exploration wells (Murphy and Gwynn, 1979a, 1979b; Glenn and others, 1980; Davis and Cook, 1983; Meiiji Resource Consultants, 1983); and data from USGS and Utah Department of Natural Resources basic-data reports (Feth and others, 1966). Many logs from these sources are from the UDWR well-drilling database. Outside of Salt Lake Valley, the wells were selected mainly from the UDWR database and include only those that encountered bedrock or are near those that encountered bedrock, and deep wells in areas where few data exist.

Seismic reflection/refraction data from published references are few and limited to surveys performed in Salt Lake and Utah Valleys and Great Salt Lake. The data consist of several deep seismic-reflection lines in Great Salt Lake and the east shore area (McNeil and Smith, 1992), two good-quality seismic-reflection lines in northern Salt Lake Valley (Radkins and others, 1989), two unreversed seismic-refraction profiles in western and southern Salt Lake Valley (Bashore, 1982), a short seismic-refraction survey near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon (Schuster, 2003), and several recent high-resolution surveys by the USGS (Stephensen and others, 2007). Seismic data are downloadable as Adobe PDF format scans of seismic sections found in the referenced material.

References

Bashore, W.M., 1982, Upper crustal structure of the Salt Lake Valley and the Wasatch fault from seismic modeling: Salt Lake City, unpublished University of Utah M.S. Thesis, 95 p.

Case, W.F., 1985, Significant drill holes of the Wasatch Front valleys including Cache Valley and Tooele Valley: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Open-File Report No. 82, 181 p.

Davis, D.A., and Cook, K.L., 1983, Evaluation of low-temperature geothermal potential in Utah and Goshen Valleys and adjacent areas, Utah, part I – gravity survey: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Report of Investigation 179, 138 p., 2 plates, various scales.

Feth, J.H., Barker, D.A., Moore, L.G., Brown, R.J., and Veirs, C.E., 1966, Lake Bonneville – geology and hydrology of the Weber Delta district, including Ogden, Utah: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 518, 76 p., 11 plates, various scales.

Glenn, W. E., Chapman, D.S., Foley, D., Capuano, R.M., Cole, D., Sibbett, B., and Ward, S.H., 1980, Geothermal exploration program, Hill Air Force Base, Weber County, Utah: Salt Lake City, University of Utah, DOE/ET/28392-42, ESL-34, 7 p., 2 plates, various scales.

International Code Council, 2006, International building code: Country Club Hills, Illinois, International Code Council, 664 p.

McNeil, B.R., and Smith, R.B., 1992, Upper crustal structure of the northern Wasatch Front, Utah, from seismic reflection and gravity data: Utah Geological Survey Contract Report 92-7, 62 p.

Meiiji Resource Consultants, 1983, Gravity based interpretive bedrock geology of Jordan Valley, Salt Lake County, Utah: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Open-File Report 38, 21 p., 4 plates, various scales.

Murphy, P.J., and Gwynn, J.W., 1979a, Geothermal investigations at Crystal Hot Springs, Salt Lake County, Utah: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Report of Investigation 139, 86 p.

Murphy, P., and Gwynn, J.W, 1979b, Geothermal investigations at selected thermal systems of the northern Wasatch Front, Weber and Box Elder Counties, Utah: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Report of Investigation 141, 45 p.

Radkins, H.C., 1990, Bedrock topography of the Salt Lake Valley, Utah, from constrained inversion of gravity data: Salt Lake City, unpublished University of Utah M.S. Thesis, 59 p.

Radkins, H.C., Murphy, M., and Schuster, G.T., 1989, Subsurface map and seismic risk analysis of the Salt Lake Valley: Utah Geological and Mineral Survey Open-File Report 152, 82 p., 4 plates.

Schuster, G.T., 2003, Forward-reverse refraction survey at Metropolitan water plant: Salt Lake City, unpublished University of Utah report, 14 p.

Stephenson, W.J., Williams, R.A., Odum, J.K., and Worley, D.M., 2007, Miscellaneous high-resolution seismic imaging investigations in Salt Lake and Utah Valleys for earthquake hazards: U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 2007-1152, 34 p.

Utah Division of Water Rights, 2009, Points of diversion database (well information program “WELLVIEW”): Online, http://www.waterrights.utah.gov/gisinfo.wrcover.asp (shapefile) and http://www.waterrights.utah.gov/cgi-bin/wellview.exe?Startup(WELLVIEW program).