2. Groundwater#
In these lectures we are going to discuss how water flows through the ground, how we can understand the low of this water, including the rate of flow of groundwater, and the importance of groundwater to supplying drinking water to our planet. As we all know, there is a vast shortage of potable water today. Understanding how to remove salt from the vast reservoir of water in the oceans (termed desalination) remains a major challenge in environmental engineering. In the meantime, we are left to tap freshwater resources and 30% of the freshwater on the planet is groundwater. Groundwater refers to the water stored in soils and rocks beneath the surface. Groundwater has a long residence time in the subsurface. In these lectures we will cover the importance of groundwater, and how and why water moves through rock in the subsurface.