Introducing groundwater physics

Water is critical to the survival of life and the continued existence of the natural environment on Earth. Most people visualize rivers and lakes as the water resources in need of protection, but groundwater makes up more than 98% of available freshwater resources, supplies 40% of the drinking water in the US and 70% in China, and is the main source of domestic water supply in most European countries. Groundwater provides approximately one-fifth of the world's industrial, agricultural, and municipal water. the science of groundwater hydrology, a discipline of geoscience, forms the framework in which management decisions about groundwater resources are made. Groundwater hydrologists are concerned with the development of groundwater for municipal, industrial, and agricultural uses; remediation of resources affected by contamination; and protection of resources from future contamination. Scientifically, the field of groundwater hydrology is diverse and includes specializations in groundwater-surface water interaction, ecohydrology, hydrogeochemistry, hydrogeomicrobiology, contaminant hydrogeology, groundwater modeling, and hydrogeophysics.1 © 2007 American Institute of Physics.