How does the thickness of the aquifer affect its storage capacity?

• A. The thicker the aquifer the greater the storage
• B. The thicker the aquifer the less the storage
• C. Storage is independent of thickness
• D. Storage depends only on porosity

Answer: (A)

Storage capacity is about how much water a unit cross-sectional area of an aquifer can hold. That capacity comes from the pore space within the saturated portion of the aquifer. If the aquifer is thicker, there is more porous material stacked in the vertical column per unit area, so more pore volume is available to store and release water. For a given material with the same porosity, increasing thickness directly increases the total volume of water that can be stored per unit area, so a thicker aquifer has greater storage. Porosity sets how much of that pore space can hold water, but thickness scales the total amount stored across the vertical dimension.