Print this pageOnward Toward an Integrated Statewide Geological GIS
WICKSTROM, LAWRENCE, H., and JAMES McDONALD
Since the first commercial oil 
well
was drilled in Ohio in 1860, over 250,000
oil and gas wells have been drilled in the state. The Ohio Divisions of
Geological Survey and Oil and Gas are now in a combined effort to bring all
current and historical well records into a computerized database. Several unique
conditions cumulate in our state to make this project very challenging: (1) The
well records span over 100 years, and records of different vintage contain
different attributes; even common attributes are located in diverse locations on
the records. (2) Many old wells have never been located on a map. These must be
sorted into locatable versus nonlocatable records. Those which can be located
must be hand spotted on maps to obtain coordinate values. (3) Various state and
nonstate entities have assigned well identifiers using different schemes at
different times. These must all be unified into one API well system. (4) Ohio
was a test case for various land subdivision schemes. Nine different subdivision
areas contain everything from undivided lands to irregularly shaped polygons to
square-mile sections. Prior to this effort, a digital base of these land
subdivisions did not exist.
Concurrent with oil and gas well digitization and database development, the
Ohio Geological Survey is developing databases for many other types of geologic
records, including coal, bedrock and Quaternary mapping, industrial-mineral mine
data, Lake Erie sediment transport, and shore erosion. These seemingly disparate
data types
have two unifying aspects: they are all valuable geologic data and
they are all spatially related. The Ohio Geological Survey is now uniting these
various databases and tables using Geographic Information Systems technology.