Managing Groundwater Sustainability

Due to its extraordinarily high quality and availability, we take groundwater as an advantage and now we experience groundwater management problems all over the world. Ground water contributes worldwide about twenty percent of people’s fresh water (Kinzelbach, Bauer, Siegfried, and Brunner). Groundwater is considered the most suitable for drinking, but we didn’t realize that over pumping ground water could be vulnerable to degradation, which leads to drying wetlands, deterioration in water quality, and increasing salinization. As groundwater cannot be renewed artificially on a large scale, sustainable management of this resource is vital (Kinzelbach, et al.). For groundwater to recharge itself, it would depend on precipitation because it is the main source for creating ground water and it is something out of our control. We experience groundwater depletion due to excessive pumping of an aquifer and this results in degradation of water quality, impacting natural wetlands, and affecting drinking water from contamination, in order to recharge groundwater, we would need to understand what would be impacted, scientific tools to help assist in groundwater sustainability management, and different techniques that we could use to artificially recharge groundwater.

Groundwater depletion occurs when we over pump an aquifer causing degradation in water quality. This can impact our drinking water systems, economic stability, and groundwater level tables. Groundwater originates from precipitation from our water cycle and is divided into two different types of groundwater flow; there are shallow groundwater flow and deep groundwater flow. Shallow groundwater flow also known as groundwater runoff, diverts onto land surfaces and flows back int...

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... recycled water or treated domestic wastewater (Clapp, Corr, Dennehy, Mace, Paque, Parker, Tyrrell).

Works Cited

Appendix A — Evaluation of Groundwater Conditions in Borrego Valley, (2010). County of San

Diego, Department of Planning and Land Use, General Plan Update Groundwater

Study.

Clapp, L., Corr. E., Dennehy, K., Mace, R., Paque, M., Parker, M., Tyrrell, K. (2005).

Groundwater Quality and Desalination Questions. National Groundwater Association.

Kinzelbach, W., Bauer, P., Siegfried, T., Brunner, P., (2003). Sustainable Groundwater

Management – Problems and Scientific Tools. Institute for Hydromechanics and Water

Resources Management.

Ponce, V.M., (2006). Groundwater Utilization and Sustainability. Groundwater Utilization and

Sustainability, Sustainability of Groundwater, Sustainable Yield of Groundwater, and Sustainable Groundwater Development.