Best Practices for Sharing Water Level Data with the New Mexico Water Data Initiative

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This document describes the New Mexico Water Data Initiative’s (WDI) preferred way to receive data related to measurements of the depth to water in groundwater wells. There are several fields that will be required as a minimum for sharing this data. Other fields are desired to better understand the data, but are not required. A data dictionary including a glossary of these required and desired fields is included at the end of this document.

Following the best practices described here will allow water level measurement data to be more easily ingested into the WDI platforms and tools. It will also increase consistency across the Water Data Catalog. In addition to this document, we have provided template files that can be used as examples.

File Structure and Format

File Format

Water level measurements should be provided in two separate files, one with location and well construction data, and one with water level measurements. The site_id field should be provided in both files to allow them to be joined. This reduces the amount of repeated information if there are many measurements for each well. It is preferred that all measurement data be provided in one measurement file even if there are multiple wells.

File Type

Files should be provided as .csv tables with one sheet or table per file. Excel spreadsheets with multiple worksheets or tabs are not ideal, they are not readable by the Data Catalog’s data API.

File Names

The most important things to remember about file naming are to be consistent and descriptive in naming your files so that it’s obvious what it contains. The preferred format for file names is as follows:

Agency_Region_Project Name_YYYYMM_DataType _Version 

the date could be a date range if data are collected over multiple years as in the example below.

NMBGMR_Statewide_HealyNetwork_WL_200010_202401_v1

Updating Existing Files

When new data have been collected, it should be added to the existing .csv table with previous data and uploaded as the same resource on the data catalog.

Data Structure and Format

Field Names

Recommended field names for both the location and measurement files are provided in the data dictionary tables below.

• Field names (column headers) should be descriptive.
• Field names should not include special characters except underscores _.
• Avoid using spaces. Use underscores where a space is needed.
• Do not begin field names with a number.
• All field names should be in the first row.
• Use all lowercase letters in field names.

Formatting of Cells and Measurement Values

• List one value per cell. Do not put multiple observations, codes, types of data (e.g. date and time), coordinates, etc. in one cell, dates (YYYY-MM-DD) do not need to be split out.
• Do not merge cells.
• Measurement values should be reported as depth to water in feet below ground surface.
• If continuous and manual measurements are included in the same table they should be in the same field and differentiated with a measurement_type field; time (HH:MM AM/PM); date (YYYYMMDD).
• Do not include units in the same cells as values.

Required and Desired Fields

The data dictionary tables below provide the minimum required fields and additional fields that increase the usefulness of the data. Required fields are necessary for the data to be usable by WDI. Desired fields greatly increase the value and usability of the data provided. Data providers are welcome to provide additional fields to what are recommended here and should include metadata descriptions of any additional fields.

Geographic Information

Coordinate information for groundwater well locations is essential to understand water level data. Locations without x,y data (coordinates) should not be included. The preferred coordinate system is latitude and longitude in decimal degrees and geodetic datum of WGS 84. However, other coordinate systems, (e.g. UTM, state plane) and datums (e.g. NAVD 83, NAD 27) are accepted. Please specify the coordinate system and horizontal datum used in the .csv tables as indicated in the data dictionary below. Indicating the vertical datum (e.g. NAVD 88), is also useful information, but is not always available depending on how information about elevation is derived, and is therefore not required. More information about geodetic datums can be found here: https://vdatum.noaa.gov/docs/datums.html.

Units

Wherever a measurement value is provided, an additional field should be included specifying measurement units as shown in the data dictionaries below and in the example templates.

Location File Data Dictionary

See the attached location file template as an example.

Field Name	Required or Desired	Description
site_id	required	Unique identifier for each measurement location. Do not include individual names of well owners or private information. Site_id must be included in both the location and measurement file to allow the data to be joined.
elevation	required	Well location elevation above mean sea level.
elevation_units	required	Units of measurement for elevation value.
y_coord	required	The y coordinate for the well location. E.g. latitude in decimal degrees.
x_coord	required	The x coordinate for the well location. E.g. longitude in decimal degrees.
coordinate_system	required	The coordinate system of the x and y coordinates, such as latitude and longitude, state plane, UTM etc. The preferred coordinate system is latitude and longitude in decimal degrees.
horizontal_datum	required	Horizontal datum of latitude and longitude values (e.g. NAD 27, NAD 83 or WGS 84).
vertical_datum	desired	Vertical datum of the elevation value (e.g. NAVD 88).
site_name	desired	The human readable name for the well (if applicable). This field can also be used in the measurement table to join the data between the two files.
county	desired	The county in which the site is located.
well_depth	desired	The total depth of the completed well below ground surface.
well_depth_unit	desired	Unit of measurement for well depth value.
hole_depth	desired	Total depth of the borehole below ground surface.
hole_depth_unit	desired	Unit of measurement for hole depth value.
screen_top	desired	Top of the screened interval below ground surface.
screen_top_unit	desired	Unit of measurement for screen top depth value.
screen_bottom	desired	Bottom of the screened interval below ground surface.
screen_bottom_unit	desired	Unit of measurement for screen bottom depth value.
casing_diameter	desired	Diameter of the well casing.
casing_diameter_unit	desired	Unit of measurement for casing diameter value.
well_completion_date	desired	Date well construction was completed.
primary_use	desired	The primary use of the well (see list of valid values below).
primary_aquifer	desired	The aquifer in which the well is screened.
lithology	desired	Lithology or formation in which the well is screened.
ose_pod_id	desired	NM Office of the State Engineer POD file number from the Water Rights Reporting System.
ose_tag_id	desired	NM Office of the State Engineer Well Identification Tag Program number.
alternate_site_id	desired	Alternate site ID for the location such as a known USGS ID or other organization ID (if applicable).
alternate_site_id_organization	desired	Organization with which the alternate site id is associated.
location_source	desired	Method of acquiring coordinates (handheld GPS; survey grade GPS; interpolated from map; reported; converted from PLSS; transit, theodolite, or other survey method).
elevation_source	desired	What is the source of the elevation measurement (GPS, survey, DEM, etc)?
location_accuracy	desired	The accuracy of the location measurement (if known). E.g. report ’10’ to indicate that coordinate data are accurate to within 10 feet.
location_accuracy_units	desired	The unit of measurement for accuracy of the location measurement (if known). E.g. report ’ft’ to indicate that coordinate data are accurate to within 10 feet.
elevation_accuracy	desired	the accuracy of the elevation measurement. E.g. report ’10’ to indicate that elevation data are accurate to within 10 feet.
elevation_accuracy_units	desired	The unit of measurement for accuracy of the elevation measurement E.g. report ’ft’ to indicate that coordinate data are accurate to within 10 feet.

Measurement File Data Dictionary

See the attached measurement file template as an example.

Field Name	Required or Desired	Description
site_id	required	Unique identifier for each measurement location. Do not include individual names of well owners or private information. Site_id must be included in both the location and measurement file to allow the data to be joined.
measurement_date	required	Date of depth to water measurement (YYYY-MM-DD).
depth_to_water	required	Depth to water below ground surface. The preferred accuracy is to 0.01 feet.
depth_to_water_unit	required	Unit of measurement for depth to water value. The preferred units are in feet below ground surface.
measurement_type	desired	What instrument was used to make the measurement (e.g. steel tape, electronic sounder (e-probe), sonic/acoustic, pressure transducer, airline).
measurement_method	desired	Indicate manual or continuous measurement. Were discrete measurements made by a person visiting the site during a field event (e-probe, steel tape), or are measurements collected continuously by an instrument installed in the well (pressure transducer, acoustic sounder).
observation_time	desired	Time of the measurement.
measuring_agency	desired	Agency that made the measurement.
notes	desired	Optional notes for relevant information regarding the measurement.

Primary Use Valid Values

Using the following categories when reporting primary use will increase consistency across the Water Data Catalog (please select one).

• Commercial
• Domestic
• Industrial
• Institutional
• Irrigation
• Livestock
• Mining
• Observation
• Open, unequipped well
• Power generation
• Public supply
• Shared domestic
• Unknown
• Unused