WaterUnderground

Research

Elevating diverse voices and groundwater research from around the world with Water Underground Talks

18th December 2020
Elevating diverse voices and groundwater research from around the world with Water Underground Talks

By Tom Gleeson and Viviana Re It has been a challenging year of a pandemic, economic collapse and an ever-increasing awareness of racism, all set against a backdrop of other global challenges including climate change and food security. We believe it is important to link groundwater with these challenges and to stay positive using our science and work as scientists to contribute to a better future. ...[Read More]

Should the pandemic change what we ‘do’ as sustainability scientists?

18th May 2020
Should the pandemic change what we ‘do’ as sustainability scientists?
Reflections and Ripples by David Hawkins-Weeks (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

By: Viviana Re and Tom Gleeson he world will likely never be the same again after the covid-19 pandemic – too much has changed for us personally, socially and culturally. The pandemic is a terrible tragedy that continues to devastate lives and economies while ironically also bearing the possibility of being a much needed global sustainability reset. So as applied scientists focused on sustai ...[Read More]

Groundwater and climate change revisited: informing adaptation in a warming world

27th April 2020
Groundwater and climate change revisited: informing adaptation in a warming world

Recent research has identified the natural resilience of groundwater to climate change and our tendency to deplete this invaluable resource. It’s time we understood, valued, and governed groundwater as the vital adaptation to climate change that it is. roundwater flowing within the geology beneath our feet is the world’s largest liquid store of freshwater. Its volume in most countries in Afr ...[Read More]

Re-thinking watersheds from the bottom up

20th April 2020
Re-thinking watersheds from the bottom up
Condon et al., WRR, 2020

n a recent commentary published in Water Resources Research, a group of us asked the question: “Where is the bottom of a watershed?” Discussions around the role of deeper groundwater in the hydrologic cycle within this group were triggered by a lecture that Jennifer McIntosh delivered at the University of Saskatchewan’s Global Institute for Water Security in 2018. The discussions around this lectu ...[Read More]

Global Groundwater Sustainability – A Call to Action… do you want to sign?

13th November 2019
Global Groundwater Sustainability – A Call to Action… do you want to sign?

I am excited about a new initiative called “Global Groundwater Sustainability: A call to action” that was first drafted at the recent Chapman conference in Valencia, Spain.  Overall, we are a global group of scientists calling for action to ensure groundwater benefits society now and into the future, and hope that you would like to join us by signing. You can see the statement, list of ...[Read More]

Groundwater pumping poses worldwide threat to riverine ecosystems

3rd October 2019
Groundwater pumping poses worldwide threat to riverine ecosystems
When will critical river flows be reached where you live?

Post by Inge de Graaf, Assistant Professor of Hydrological Environmental Systems at the University of Freiburg. With the climate strikes happening all over the world, I sometimes wish I had a crystal ball that would allow me to look into the future. Or even better, a crystal ball that could show me different scenarios of what will happen if we change, or not. Well, I do not have a crystal ball, bu ...[Read More]

Groundwater and a ‘green drought’

24th September 2019
Groundwater and a ‘green drought’

Post by Andy Baker, professor in the Connected Waters Initiative Centre at UNSW Sydney, Andreas Hartmann, assistant professor in Hydrological Modeling and Water Resources at the University of Freiburg, and Romane Berthelin, PhD student in Hydrological Modeling and Water Resources at the University of Freiburg. Here in New South Wales (NSW) in southeastern Australia, a long-running drought continue ...[Read More]

Shedding light on the invisible: addressing potential groundwater contamination by plastic microfibers

6th September 2019
Shedding light on the invisible: addressing potential groundwater contamination by plastic microfibers
Koh Kong, Cambodia (picture by Viviana Re, 2016).

Post by Viviana Re, researcher at the University of Pisa in Italy. You can follow Viviana on Twitter at @biralnas. Until recently, the topic of plastic pollution was relatively unknown to the general public, although the problem was already under everyone’s very eyes. Indeed, plastic pollution has become one of the most debated issues over the last few years, in some cases even overshadowing ...[Read More]

A do-it-yourself Jupyter notebook to constrain sediment permeability

24th July 2019
A do-it-yourself Jupyter notebook to constrain sediment permeability

Post by Elco Luijendijk, Junior lecturer in the Department of Structural Geology and Geodynamics at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen and WaterUnderground founder Tom Gleeson (@water_undergrnd), Associate Professor in the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria. Most of the groundwater on our planet is located in sedimentary rocks. This is why it is important to know how eas ...[Read More]

Quest for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers at Regional to Global Scales: Upcoming Chapman Conference

27th June 2019
Quest for Sustainability of Heavily Stressed Aquifers at Regional to Global Scales: Upcoming Chapman Conference

Abstracts are due soon (July 10th) for the upcoming Chapman conference on groundwater sustainability on Oct 21-24, 2019 in Valencia, Spain. Hopefully this will be a rare opportunity where many of the leading people on groundwater sustainability will gather with a shared intention to share, discuss and debate scientific advances and encourage a pivot towards groundwater sustainability. A range of p ...[Read More]