Groundwater最新文献

As readers of Groundwater, you have all faced a quizzical look when you told someone that you are a hydrogeologist. You have discovered that simply repeating the word—although, after all, it describes itself—is rarely sufficient. So, you have developed your own short explanation for what a hydrogeologist does and why our work is critical to society (one of my favorite is, “You know that water you drank yesterday? You're welcome.”). If you are in a position to hire an entry-level professional hydrogeologist, you are likely to share something else: a growing concern that there are not enough graduates to fill current demand, let alone future needs for our profession.

In summary, the future of hydrogeology is bright, but we are not producing enough MS-level trained students even to meet the current demand. In addition, universities are moving away from their role as the principal source of master's graduates and are unlikely to fill the future needs of industry or academia.

The good news is that there are several efforts in progress to address this problem. Some programs (e.g., the University of Neuchatel) have strong enrollment and continue to produce graduates. Other programs are coming together to offer multi-university degrees (e.g., the European ERASMUS+ cooperation project iNUX). In addition, there are efforts to redesign the university-based MS to deliver accessible in-person (e.g., the University of Arizona) or hybrid in-person/online programs (e.g., the University of Kansas and the University of Waterloo). There are also extra-university programs that focus on advanced topics (e.g., the Italian SYMPL School of Hydrogeologic Modeling). Finally, there are efforts to make videos and textbooks available for free to support educational programs (e.g., the micro-video project, the Groundwater Modeling for Decision Support Initiative, and the Groundwater Project).

We need all of these efforts to succeed if we hope to produce the workforce that will be needed in the future. However, there is a crucial first step that we need to complete as a community to ensure that future students are receiving the training that they need to enter the profession.

This is where we need your help as groundwater professionals.

Thank you for being part of the Groundwater community and I hope to work with you to advance our profession into the future!

Miami-Dade County (MDC) has over 112,000 septic systems, some of which are at risk of compromise due to water table rise associated with sea level rise. MDC is surrounded by protected water bodies, including Biscayne Bay, with environmentally sensitive ecosystems and is underlain by highly transmissive karstic limestone. The main objective of the study is to provide first estimates of the locations and magnitudes of septic return flows to discharge endpoints. This is accomplished by leveraging MDC's county-scale surface-groundwater model using pathline analysis to estimate the transport and discharge fate of septic system flows under the complex time history of groundwater flow response to pumping, canal management, storms, and other environmental factors. The model covers an area of 4772 km² in Southeast Florida. Outputs from the model were used to create a 30-year (2010 to 2040) simulation of the spatial–temporal pathlines from septic input locations to their termination points, allowing us to map flow paths and the spatial distribution of the septic flow discharge endpoints under the simulated conditions. Most septic return flows were discharged to surface water, primarily canals 52,830 m³/d and Biscayne Bay (5696 m³/d), and well fields (14,066 m³/d). Results allow us to identify “hotspots” to guide water quality sampling efforts and to provide recommendations for septic-to-sewer conversion areas that should provide most benefit by reducing nutrient loading to water bodies.

Analytical and semi-analytical models for stream depletion with transient stream stage drawdown induced by groundwater pumping are developed to address a deficiency in existing models, namely, the use of a fixed stream stage condition at the stream–aquifer interface. Field data are presented to demonstrate that stream stage drawdown does indeed occur in response to groundwater pumping near aquifer-connected streams. A model that predicts stream depletion with transient stream drawdown is developed based on stream channel mass conservation and finite stream channel storage. The resulting models are shown to reduce to existing fixed-stage models in the limit as stream channel storage becomes infinitely large, and to the confined aquifer flow with a no-flow boundary at the streambed in the limit as stream storage becomes vanishingly small. The model is applied to field measurements of aquifer and stream drawdown, giving estimates of aquifer hydraulic parameters, streambed conductance, and a measure of stream channel storage. The results of the modeling and data analysis presented herein have implications for sustainable groundwater management.