Kessling County Aquifer Cross-Section: A Two-Ink Illustration Project

Driving question. How can one drawing show a well owner where their water comes from underground, and how things done on the land above can reach it?

Client. The Kessling County Health Department is a fictional agency. It is printing a fold-out guide called Know Your Well for homes that get their water from private wells. Your team will design the centerfold. It is a cross-section, which is a drawing of a slice through the ground, as if the land were cut straight down and you looked at the cut face from the side. The county calls this slice Section A-A'. It runs 12,000 feet from Maddox Ridge (A, the west end) to the Tulley River (A', the east end). A county review panel will hear your presentation in Session 5.

County data sheet (fictional). All heights are elevations in feet above sea level. Distances are measured from the west end of the line.

The ground surface and the water table both slope evenly between the stations in the table. The layers below lie flat and are the same all along the line.

• Soil: about 3 feet thick on top of the sand and gravel. It is too thin to draw at section scale, so your team decides how to show it.
• Sand and gravel: from the ground surface down to 560 feet. This is the upper aquifer. Below the water table, the spaces between its grains are full of water.
• Clay: from 560 feet down to 540 feet. Clay holds water in very tiny pores but lets it pass through very slowly, so it acts as a confining layer.
• Sandstone: from 540 feet down to 400 feet. This is the lower aquifer. Water fills the pores and small cracks in the rock.
• Shale bedrock: below 400 feet. Show it down to 370 feet, which is the bottom of the section.

The farmhouse well is 50 feet deep. Its screen, the slotted part that lets water in, is the lowest 20 feet of the well, so it draws from the sand and gravel. The newer house's well is 150 feet deep. Steel casing sealed on the outside runs from the surface to 110 feet deep, and the screen runs from 110 to 150 feet, so it draws from the sandstone. Groundwater in both aquifers moves from west to east, toward the river.

Constraints.

• Paper: one tabloid sheet, 17 inches wide by 11 inches tall, turned sideways.
• Main frame: exactly 12 inches wide and 6 inches tall. The 12,000-foot line fills the full width, so the horizontal scale is 1 inch = 1,000 feet.
• Room above ground: leave at least 1.5 inches between the highest ground point and the top of the frame for the houses, the field, trees, and labels.
• Thinnest layer: the clay must print at least 1/4 inch tall so its pattern can be read.
• Two inks only: black and one blue. You may use lighter tints of each and overlap them. No other colors are allowed.
• Photocopy test: some county offices copy the guide in black and white, so every layer must still be easy to tell apart in a gray copy.
• Water in pores: show the water in each aquifer as blue tint running through the grain pattern. Do not fill an aquifer with flat, solid blue.
• Inset: the farmhouse well and the drain field are 150 feet apart, which is only 0.15 inch at section scale. Show them in one inset box no larger than 4 inches wide and 3 inches tall. Draw it at a larger scale, give it its own scale bar, and put a locator mark on the main section.
• Lettering: labels at least 1/8 inch tall and the title at least 1/2 inch tall. A label that crosses a pattern needs a knockout, which is a small clear patch behind the words, or a leader line out to open space.
• Captions: exactly three, and each one 40 words or fewer.
• Required marks: A and A', west and east, a horizontal scale bar, a vertical scale or elevation axis, and a line in the form "Vertical exaggeration: N times."

Final deliverable. Turn in three things to the fictional review panel. The first is the finished centerfold on the tabloid sheet, with the main section, the inset, a legend, the scale marks, a title, and the three captions. The second is a one-page design memo that states your vertical scale, vertical exaggeration, and vertical origin, and reports what your photocopy test showed. The third is a three-minute team presentation.

1. Session 1, the data and the reader. Read the data sheet as a team. On scrap paper, draw a 12-inch strip of the section at true scale, where 1 inch = 1,000 feet both across and down. Mark where the ground surface and the clay layer fall, and write one sentence about what the strip shows. Then list six things a well owner must be able to find in the finished drawing, ranked from most to least important. Output: the true-scale strip and the ranked list.
2. Session 2, scale, exaggeration, and origin. Find the range of vertical scales that meets both the frame rule and the clay rule. Choose one scale in that range. Divide the horizontal feet per inch by your vertical feet per inch to find the vertical exaggeration. Next, choose the origin for your vertical axis. You can label elevation above sea level, or you can label depth below the ground at one named point. Write down one scale you rejected and your reason. Output: a scale decision sheet, plus a pencil layout on tracing paper that places every layer boundary, the water table, both wells, the field, and the river at your chosen scale.
3. Session 3, the two-ink pattern system. Design a swatch for each of the four layers. Show how the water-filled part of each aquifer differs from the dry sand and gravel above the water table. Also design line styles for the ground surface, the water table, well casing, well screens, and flow arrows. Draw every swatch at least 1 inch square on one card. Photocopy the card in black and white, or photograph it in grayscale, and view the copy from about 6 feet away. Revise any two swatches that blend together. Output: the original card, the gray copy, and a note on each change.
4. Session 4, full-size draft and the well-owner test. Move your layout onto the tabloid sheet and ink the main section and the inset. Add the legend, the scale marks, A and A', and all labels. Then trade drafts with another team. A reviewer from that team gets 60 seconds to find the water that feeds the farmhouse well, the clay layer, and the direction groundwater moves, and marks anything they could not find. Output: the inked draft and the reviewer's marked sheet.
5. Session 5, captions, revision, and the panel. Write the three captions. The first explains where the farmhouse well gets its water. The second explains what the clay layer does and where the deep well draws from. The third explains how water from the drain field can reach the farmhouse well. Fix what the reviewer marked, finish the design memo, and present to the review panel. In the presentation, name one choice your team made to help the well owner read the drawing, even though it bends true scale, and explain it. Output: the final centerfold, the memo, and the presentation.