water cycle

Why so salty? Coastal groundwater quality under threat

WaterUnderground 11th August 2022

View over the Llobregat delta, where groundwater quality suffers from seawater intrusion https://web.archive.org/web/20161015110631/http://www.panoramio.com/photo/33131577

Guest contribution from Daniel Kretschmer, University of Potsdam European groundwater quality is deteriorated by seawater intrusion, the displacement of freshwater by a landward movement of seawater (Custodio, 2010). Just south of Barcelona, the deep confined aquifer at the Llobregat river delta has experienced SWI of several kilometers due to intensive groundwater abstraction in the 20th century ...[Read More]

The rise and fall of urban groundwater

WaterUnderground 8th July 2022

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 and a ‘green drought’

WaterUnderground 24th September 2019

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]

Video: Linking water planetary boundaries and UN Sustainable Development Goals

WaterUnderground 7th May 2019

Tom Gleeson talking about doughnut economics and showing great doughnut eating restraint.

Water Underground creator Tom Gleeson prepared this quick research video (with no more than a toothbrush, a file holder, and a doughnut, in one take!) for the Ripples project meeting at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, that was held in April. In this video, he talks about using doughnut economics for linking water planetary boundaries and UN Sustainable Development Goals. Display "Linking wat ...[Read More]

Have you ever wondered if groundwater is connected to climate?

WaterUnderground 1st April 2019

Post by Tom Gleeson, Assistant Professor in Civil Engineering at the University of Victoria. ‘Groundwater-surface water interactions’ has become standard hydrologic lexicon and a perennial favorite session title at various conferences… but how often do you hear the phrase ‘groundwater-climate interactions’? A group of hydrologists, hydrogeologists, atmospheric scientists and geodesists that met i ...[Read More]

Of Karst! – short episodes about karst

WaterUnderground 15th March 2019

Post by Andreas Hartmann, Assistant Professor in Hydrological Modeling and Water Resources at the University of Freiburg. Episode 4 – Karst Groundwater: quick and slow at the same time? We often associate groundwater with large water storage and very slow water movement for instance compared to rivers. But is it possible that groundwater flow can be as quick as stream flow and, at the same aquife ...[Read More]

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

WaterUnderground 18th February 2019

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

WaterUnderground 8th October 2018

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]

Happy birthday plate tectonics!

WaterUnderground 16th March 2018

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]

Groundwater organic matter: carbon source or sink?

WaterUnderground 13th October 2017

The Macquarie River, Wellington, Australia, a major tributary of the Murray-Darling Basin. The river is recharging the groundwater, but how far into the research bore field can we detect elevated concentrations of organic matter?

Post by Andy Baker, Professor researching groundwater, caves, past climate, organic carbon and more at the University of New South Wales, in Australia. __________________________________________________ We know a lot about the carbon cycle, right? Increased carbon dioxide emissions since the Industrial Revolution have perturbed the carbon cycle. This has led to rising atmospheric carbon dioxide le ...[Read More]