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Protecting springs from groundwater extraction: is a ‘drawdown trigger’ a sensible strategy?

Protecting springs from groundwater extraction: is a ‘drawdown trigger’ a sensible strategy?

By Matthew Currell – Senior Lecturer at RMIT University Springs, some of which have been flowing for hundreds of thousands of years, have been disappearing in Australia due to human water use over the past century. Following a hotly contested court case, Australia’s Environment Minister imposed a 20cm ‘drawdown limit’ at a set of springs, to protect …[Read More]

Human Drought?

Human Drought?

By Anne Van Loon – a water science lecturer at the University of Birmingham Recently I published a commentary in Nature Geoscience with the title ‘Drought in the Anthropocene’. In that commentary, my co-authors and I argued that in the current human-dominated world, we cannot study and manage natural drought processes separately from human influences on the water …[Read More]

One hell of a great groundwater textbook now available free

One hell of a great groundwater textbook now available free

‘Groundwater’ the seminar text book from Freeze and Cheery (1979) is free in pdf now…just follow the links here. This text book is almost as old as I am and important parts of modern hydrogeology are rusty or non-existent (like hydroecology amongst other topics) but it is still lucidly written and useful.  I routinely send …[Read More]

The new and exciting face of waterunderground.org

The new and exciting face of waterunderground.org

by Tom Gleeson I started waterunderground.org a few years ago as my personal groundwater nerd blog with the odd guest post written by others. Since I love working with others, I thought it would be more fun, and more interesting for readers, to expand the number of voices regularly posting. So here is the new …[Read More]

Can we use an infrared camera to tell us how much groundwater is coming out of the side of a cliff?

Can we use an infrared camera to tell us how much groundwater is coming out of the side of a cliff?

By Erin Mundy – a plain language summary of part of her Masters thesis Groundwater is an important resource, with approximately 2 billion people around the world using groundwater everyday. Although most groundwater is beneath our feet, sometimes groundwater leaks out of stream-banks, hill sides and cliff faces – this is called groundwater seepage. Current …[Read More]

Tracking the Fallout and Fate of Fukushima Iodine-129 in Rain and Groundwater

Tracking the Fallout and Fate of Fukushima Iodine-129 in Rain and Groundwater

This post is written by Matt Herod, and reposted here with permission… A recently published paper (by myself and colleagues from uOttawa and Environment Canada) investigates the environmental fate of the long lived radioisotope of iodine, 129I, which was released by the Fukushima-Daichii Nuclear Accident (FDNA). Within 6 days of the FDNA 129I concentrations in Vancouver precipitation increased 5-15 times above …[Read More]

Nature Geoscience digging into water underground this month!

Nature Geoscience digging into water underground this month!

Nature Geoscience is digging hard into water underground – the February issue is part of a special focus on groundwater. The cover this month is a gorgeous (groundwater-filled?) waterfall by Glen Jasechko, Scott’s brother.  The groundwater focus includes: commentary on drought in the Anthropocene, led by Anne van Loon news and views pieces by Ying …[Read More]