WaterUnderground

groundwater depletion

The rise and fall of urban groundwater

8th July 2022
The rise and fall of urban groundwater
Figure 2 No play today. Groundwater flooding in Sydney in 2007. (Photo: Ian Acworth)

Original Article by Andy Baker and Margaret Shanafield Cities are home to about half of the global population and urban population has doubled in the last 50 years from 1.5 billion people in 1975 to 3.5 billion people in 2015. This urban population will rise to a predicted 5 billion people by 2050. So, it’s probable that most of us will be reading this from a city. So, city dwellers, do you know h ...[Read More]

Groundwater: depleting reserves must be protected around the world

20th May 2022
Groundwater: depleting reserves must be protected around the world
A well brings groundwater to the surface at an oasis in Egypt. Water Alternatives Photos, CC BY-SA

Original Article post here on theconversation.com, authored by Richard Taylor and Mohammad Shamsudduha (‘Shams’) Though water is central to our everyday lives and indeed life itself, we often mark World Water Day on March 22 not by reminding ourselves of all that water brings, but of the consequences of its absence or contamination.         As the American polymath Benjamin Franklin no ...[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]

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]

Update on the groundwater situation in Cape Town

3rd June 2019
Update on the groundwater situation in Cape Town
Freeze-frame from the featured IAEA video on drought conditions in Cape Town.

Post by Jared van Rooyen, PhD student in Earth Science at Stellenbosch University, in South Africa. When the Cape Town water crisis first emerged it took almost a year before active contingencies were put in place. Four major ideas were proposed: (1) Intense water restrictions for municipal water users, (2) greywater recycling facilities, (3) groundwater augmentation of water supplies, and (4) des ...[Read More]

Community advice to young hydrologists, Part 1

10th November 2017
Community advice to young hydrologists, Part 1

We at Water Underground loved reading Young Hydrologic Society’s post titled “Community advice to young hydrologists” – an advice column written by a network of established scientists in the field. We appreciated the column so much, in fact, that we have decided to re-blog the post to you (with YHS’s consent, of course). We’ve split up their post by question, and have added in hyperlinks to all co ...[Read More]

Western water wells are going dry

28th September 2017
Western water wells are going dry

Post by Scott Jasechko, Assistant Professor of Water Resources at the University of Calgary, in Canada, and by Debra Perrone, Postdoctoral Research Scholar at Stanford University, in the United States of America. __________________________________________________ Wells are excavated structures, dug, drilled or driven into the ground to access groundwater for drinking, cleaning, irrigating, and coo ...[Read More]

What is the difference between ‘water withdrawal’ and ‘water consumption’, and why do we need to know?

24th June 2017
What is the difference between ‘water withdrawal’ and ‘water consumption’, and why do we need to know?

Post by Inge de Graaf, University of Freiburg, Environmental Hydrological Systems group ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Last week I had to teach my first class in global hydrology. When I showed the global trend on increasing demands and withdrawals (see Figure) I needed to explain the different terms as sometimes the ...[Read More]

Limits to global groundwater use

20th December 2016
Limits to global groundwater use

Post by WaterUnderground contributor Inge de Graaf. Inge is a postdoc fellow at Colorado School of Mines, in the USA. Groundwater is the world’s most important source of freshwater. It supplies 2 billion people with drinking water and is used for irrigation of the largest share of the world’s food supply. However, in many regions around the world, groundwater reserves are depleting as the re ...[Read More]

The great American groundwater road trip: Interstate 80 over the Ogallala Aquifer

11th August 2016
The great American groundwater road trip: Interstate 80 over the Ogallala Aquifer

  Authored by: Sam Zipper – Postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison In late July, my wife and I loaded the dog into the car, cranked up the water-related tunes, and drove over a few million cubic meters of water. No, we haven’t traded in our sedan for an amphibious vehicle – rather, we were driving west, a ...[Read More]