Groundwater, the Hidden Resource

Hydrogeology, Geology, & Environmental Issues

Date posted: 12/03/14

Everyone knows that water is essential to human, plant, and animal survival. From huge cities to tiny villages, about 50 per cent of the world population depends on groundwater every day. While groundwater is the most abundant source of fresh water on earth, the water is in storage in the great groundwater reservoir below the surface, the top of which is relatively near the surface and extends thousands of feet below in saturated conditions. We often know where to locate it because it occurs in porous or fracture media. Although indicated in the video, there is no mystery behind the great resource of groundwater. It has been well studied throughout the world for many decades. UNESCO should site their own projects and reports on groundwater. They should know that although indicated in this video, groundwater does not occur in soils. It most commonly occurs in shallow and deep sands, gravels, and sandstones as well as in the cracks and fracture zones in hard rocks such as in granite and basalt and other igneous and metamorphic rocks, and in solution channels within limestone and other carbonate rocks. Further, during drought, recharge by precipitation to the great groundwater reservoir declines, and as groundwater is removed by pumping, the water levels and pressures decline...until regular precipitation resumes which raises the water levels. The lower the water levels become during a drought the more expensive groundwater becomes to pump - because of increased electricity costs and the need to deepen the well intake below the bottom of the original well. Visit the campaign website - www.thehiddenresource.com