Groundwater Hydrology

Book excerpt: Increasing demand for water, higher standards of living, depletion of resources of acceptable quality, and excessive water pollution due to urban, agricultural, and industrial expansions have caused intense environmental, social, economic, and political predicaments. More frequent and severe floods and droughts have changed the ability and resiliency of water infrastructure systems to operate and provide services to the public. These concerns and issues have also changed the way we plan and manage our surface and groundwater resources. Groundwater Hydrology: Engineering, Planning, and Management presents a compilation of the state-of-the-art subjects and techniques in the education and practice of groundwater and describes them in a systematic and integrated fashion useful for undergraduate and graduate students and practitioners. The book develops a system view of groundwater fundamentals and model-making techniques through the application of science, engineering, planning, and management principles. It discusses the classical issues in groundwater hydrology and hydraulics followed by coverage of water quality issues. The authors delineate the process of analyzing data, identification, and parameter estimation; tools and model-building techniques and the conjunctive use of surface and groundwater techniques; aquifer restoration, remediation, and monitoring techniques; and analysis of risk. They touch on groundwater risk and disaster management and then explore the impact of climate change on groundwater and discuss the tools needed for analyzing future data realization and downscaling large-scale low-resolution data to local watershed and aquifer scales for impact studies. The combined coverage of engineering and planning tools and techniques as well as specific challenges for restoration and remediation of polluted aquifers sets this book apart. It also introduces basic tools and techniques for making decisions about and planning for future groundwater development activities, taking into account regional sustainability issues. An examination of the interface between groundwater challenges, the book demonstrates how to apply systems analysis techniques to groundwater engineering, planning, and management.