WaterUnderground

WaterUnderground

Groundwater—the world’s largest freshwater store— is a life-sustaining resource that supplies water to billions of people, plays a central part in irrigated agriculture and influences the health of many ecosystems. 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. The blog, started by Tom Gleeson and managed by Xander Huggins, is the first blog hosted on both the EGU blogs and the AGU blogosphere.

Water: underground source for billions could take more than a century to respond fully to climate change

18th February 2019
Water: underground source for billions could take more than a century to respond fully to climate change
Cenota Samula sinkhole in Yucatan, Mexico. Tono Balaguer/Shutterstock

WaterUnderground post by Mark O. Cuthbert, Cardiff University; Kevin M. Befus, University of Wyoming, and Tom Gleeson, University of Victoria Groundwater is the biggest store of accessible freshwater in the world, providing billions of people with water for drinking and crop irrigation. That’s all despite the fact that most will never see groundwater at its source – it’s stored naturally below gro ...[Read More]

Groundwater and drought

8th October 2018
Groundwater and drought
Wellington, NSW, April 2018. There has been no rainfall recharge of the groundwater here for 16 months (and counting). How do we know?

Post by Andy Baker, Professor researching groundwater, caves, past climate, organic carbon and more at the University of New South Wales, in Australia. __________________________________________________ Drought is in the news here in New South Wales, Australia. But how are rainfall, drought and groundwater related? First, we need to understand what drought is. Is it a water shortage? Or a lack of ...[Read More]

Groundwater and Education – Part two

2nd August 2018
Groundwater and Education – Part two

Post by Viviana Re, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pavia (Università di Pavia), in Italy. You can follow Viviana on Twitter at @biralnas. Part two of a two-part series on groundwater and education by Viviana. __________________________________________________ In my last post (“Drawing out groundwater (from the well)”) I wrote about the reasons why, as groundwater scientists, we shoul ...[Read More]

How deep does groundwater go? Mining (dark) data from the depths

19th July 2018
How deep does groundwater go? Mining (dark) data from the depths

Post by Kevin Befus, Assistant Professor at the College of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Wyoming, in the United States. __________________________________________________ We’ve all been asked (or do the asking), “where does your water come from?” This is a fundamental question for establishing a series of additional questions that can ultimately help define strategies for va ...[Read More]

Data drought or data flood?

28th May 2018
Data drought or data flood?

Post by Anne Van Loon, Lecturer in Physical Geography (Water sciences) at the University of Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. __________________________________________________ The basis for (almost) all scientific work, at least in the earth and environmental sciences, is DATA. We all need data to search for the answers to our questions. There are a number of options to get hold of data; we can ...[Read More]

Socio-hydrology meets Broadway: Can we survive drought if we stop using the toilet?

25th April 2018
Socio-hydrology meets Broadway: Can we survive drought if we stop using the toilet?

Post by Samuel Zipper, postdoctoral fellow at both McGill University and the University of Victoria, in Canada. You can follow Sam on Twitter at @ZipperSam. ___________________________________________________________ How can society best cope with water scarcity? With Cape Town on the verge of being the first major city to run out of water (a topic for a future post here on Water Underground), thi ...[Read More]

Happy birthday plate tectonics!

16th March 2018
Happy birthday plate tectonics!
Birthday festivities

Post by Elco Luijendijk, a junior lecturer, and David Hindle, lecturer and head of geodynamic modelling, both at the Department of Structural Geology and Geodynamics at the University of Göttingen, in Germany. _______________________________________________ As we’ve firmly moved into 2018, we can say happy 50th birthday to one of the most revolutionary scientific theories of the last century: plat ...[Read More]

Crowdfunding Science: What worked and what didn’t, who pledged and how did we reach them?

6th March 2018
Crowdfunding Science: What worked and what didn’t, who pledged and how did we reach them?
Jared Van Rooyen (at centre), pictured alongside research group members Yaa Agyare-Dwomoh (left) and Zita Harilall (right).

Post by Jared van Rooyen, MSc candidate in Earth Science at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa. Part two of three in a Crowdfunding Science series by Jared. ___________________________________________________________ During March of 2017, myself and a group of students supervised by Dr. Jodie Miller of Stellenbosch University’s Earth Science department (South Africa) completed a 5-week long ...[Read More]

A cool new collectible: Water

2nd March 2018
A cool new collectible: Water

Post by Matt Herod, Waste and Decommissioning Project Officer for the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and Adjunct Professor in Earth and Environmental Science at the University of Ottawa, in Ottawa, Canada. _______________________________________________ I have always been a mineral and fossil collector. It was a hobby that stuck and blossomed into a career. I still collect minerals and fossil ...[Read More]

A Tanzanian groundwater safari through the last 2 million years

5th January 2018
A Tanzanian groundwater safari through the last 2 million years

Post by Mark Cuthbert, Research Fellow and Lecturer at Cardiff University, in the United Kingdom, and by Gail Ashley, Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, in the United States. _______________________________________________ During the dry season, Lake Masek in Northern Tanzania (see map) is a lovely place to be if you’re a hippo or a flamingo, but for humans it’s an inhospitable environ ...[Read More]