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groundwater depletion

The rise and fall of urban groundwater

The rise and fall of urban groundwater

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 …[Read More]

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

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 …[Read More]

Update on the groundwater situation in Cape Town

Update on the groundwater situation 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 …[Read More]

Community advice to young hydrologists, Part 1

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 …[Read More]

Western water wells are going dry

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 cooling. We recently mapped groundwater wells across …[Read More]

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

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 term “water use” gets, well, misused. The …[Read More]

Limits to global groundwater use

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 …[Read More]