Detail of a photo: Five stacked black-and-white close-ups of a water drop on soil, seen from the side. From top to bottom the clear rounded drop shrinks and darkens into a small dark mound.
WaterUnderground

About

Water Underground is a groundwater nerd blog written by a global collective of hydrogeologic researchers for water resource professionals, academics and anyone interested in groundwater, research, teaching and supervision.

We share the following aspirations:

  • approachable groundwater science at the interface of other earth and human systems
  • sustainable use of groundwater that reduces poverty, social injustice and food security while maintaining the highest environmental standards
  • compassionate, effective supervision
  • innovative, effective teaching
  • transparency of scientific methods, assumptions and data

Water Underground was started by Tom Gleeson who is now the executive editor, while editor Xander Huggins manages the blog day-to-day. The blog is hosted on both the EGU Blogs and the AGU blogosphere since October 2016. We encourage discussion as comments to posts or submissions to waterundergroundblog@gmail.com. We all write peer-reviewed articles and are also inspired to write more informally to a broader audience.  We have re-posted to other blogs and encourage re-posting with permission. While contributors generally agree with what this blog is about, anything written is the authors’ ideas and opinions and does not represent the whole. We don’t get paid to write blog posts (just in case you were wondering!) so what we write are not the ideas or opinions of our respective employers. Some of what we write may be political, and posts may have conflicting opinions since we want to encourage discussion or debate of a particular issue.

Frequent contributors include:

  • Andy Baker (University of New South Wales, Australia) – caves and karst (I actually visit the water underground!), climate and past climate
  • Kevin Befus (University of Wyoming, United States) – groundwater-surface interactions, coastal groundwater, groundwater age
  • Mark Cuthbert (Cardiff University, United Kingdom) – groundwater recharge & discharge processes, paleo-hydrogeology, dryland hydro(geo)logy, climate-groundwater interactions; tweets @markocuthbert
  • Inge de Graaf (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany) – global groundwater withdrawal, flow and sustainability
  • Grant Ferguson (University of Saskatchewan, Canada) – groundwater & energy, regional groundwater flow, sustainability; tweets @geosomething
  • Tom Gleeson (University of Victoria, Canada) – mega-scale groundwater systems and sustainability; tweets at @water_undergrnd
  • Scott Jasechko (UC – Santa Barbara) – global isotope hydrology; groundwater, precipitation, evapotranspiration; tweets @sjasechko
  • Andreas Hartmann (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany) – karst hydrology, subsurface heterogeneity, hydrology and water quality simulation; tweets at @sub_heterogenty
  • Matt Herod (Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Canada) – radioactive/stable isotope geochemistry, watershed hydrology, hydrogeology, radioisotope tracers); blogs at EGU GeoSphere; tweets @GeoHerod
  • Elco Luijendijk (University of Gottingen, Germany) – paleo-hydrogeology, deep groundwater flow, large scale groundwater systems
  • Viviana Re (University of Pavia, Italy) – isotope hydrogeology, groundwater quality assessment, rural development, socio-hydrogeology; tweets @biralnas
  • Anne Van Loon (University of Birmingham University, United Kingdom) – drought in the Anthropocene, storage in groundwater, snow, ice & more; tweets @AnneVanLoon
  • Jared van Rooyen (Stellenbosch University, South Africa) – isotope hydrogeology, citizen science, crowd-funding @we_know_water
  • Sam Zipper (University of Victoria, Canada) – ecohydrology, agriculture, urbanization, land use change; tweets @ZipperSC

For contributors:

1) Before submitting:

  • sign up for a time to submit (ideally with a rough title, and suggested editor) using google docs

2) When submitting:

  • email article to waterundergroundblog@gmail.com or upload it to the associated google drive folder
  • Articles are normally 100–750 words that ideally include lots of hyperlinks, videos and graphics, but an alternative form of post is just a video or graphic
  • Write in plain language (ideally using upgoer-five to report at the bottom of the article what percentage of the article is in plain language – like this article as an example)
  • Submit hyperlinked text (or weblinks) in appropriate places in the article
  • Use proper referencing to scientific articles when appropriate
  • Put the name of the author(s) at the top of the article
  • Try to make the article interesting – click-bait is not an awful thing!

3) When reviewing:

  • Every article is reviewed by one of the frequent contributors to help improve style and clarity but this is not a rigorous peer-review!

The opinions expressed in the WaterUnderground blog are those of the authors, whose views may differ from those of the European Geosciences Union.

About EGU

The European Geosciences Union (EGU) is the leading organisation for Earth, planetary and space science research in Europe. With our partner organisations worldwide, we foster fundamental geoscience research, alongside applied research that addresses key societal and environmental challenges. Our vision is to realise a sustainable and just future for humanity and for the planet.

It is a non-profit international union of scientists with about 23,500 members from all over the world. Membership is open to individuals who are professionally engaged in or associated with geosciences and planetary and space sciences and related studies, including students and retired seniors.

The EGU publishes a number of diverse scientific journals, which use an innovative open access format, and organises topical meetings, and education and outreach activities. It also honours scientists with a number of awards and medals. The annual EGU General Assembly is the largest and most prominent European geosciences event, attracting over 22,000 scientists from all over the world in the year 2026. The meeting’s sessions cover a wide range of topics, including volcanology, planetary exploration, the Earth’s internal structure and atmosphere, climate, as well as energy and resources.

The EGU was established in September 2002 as a merger of the European Geophysical Society (EGS) and the European Union of Geosciences (EUG), and has headquarters in Munich, Germany.