Groundwater is an important source of potable water because it is abundant and readily available in many locations and often requires little or no treatment. In 1995, groundwater accounted for approximately 20% of potable water use in the U.S., and approximately 50% of the U.S. population relied on groundwater for their source of drinking water. In most European countries, groundwater accounts ...

important to know the age so you can assess the susceptibility of drinking water supplies to surface contamination. If you know that the groundwater in a particular area fell 10 years ago as surface rainfall, you can then decide how long it will take a surface contamination to reach the water supply. " Plummer says that information on groundwater age, or the average time since the molecules wer...

Recent EU legislation is directed to reverse the upward trends in the concentrations of agricultural pollutants in groundwater. However, uncertainty of the groundwater travel time towards the screens of the groundwater quality monitoring networks complicates the demonstration of trend reversal. We investigated whether trend reversal can be demonstrated by relating concentrations of pollutants i...

Many of the world's megacities depend on groundwater from geologically complex aquifers that are over-exploited and threatened by contamination. Here, using the example of Dhaka, Bangladesh, we illustrate how interactions between aquifer heterogeneity and groundwater exploitation jeopardize groundwater resources regionally. Groundwater pumping in Dhaka has caused large-scale drawdown that exten...

To understand the hydrogeochemical processes regulating well water arsenic (As) evolution in fractured bedrock aquifers, three domestic wells with [As] up to 478 μg/L are investigated in central Maine. Geophysical logging reveals that fractures near the borehole bottom contribute 70-100% of flow. Borehole and fracture water samples from various depths show significant proportions of As (up to 6...

Viruses are the most abundant biological entity on Earth and their interactions with microbial communities are recognized to influence microbial ecology and impact biogeochemical cycling in various ecosystems. While the factors that control the distribution of viruses in surface aquatic environments are well-characterized, the abundance and distribution of continental subsurface viruses with re...

Most field-based approaches that address runoff generation questions have been conducted in steep landscapes with shallow soils. Runoff generation processes in low relief landscapes with deep soils remain less understood. We addressed this by characterizing dominant runoff generating flow paths by monitoring the timing and magnitude of precipitation, runoff, shallow soil moisture, and shallow a...

Subsurface microorganisms may respond to increased CO2 levels in ways that significantly affect pore fluid chemistry. Changes in CO2 concentration or speciation may result from the injection of supercritical CO2 (scCO2) into deep aquifers. Therefore, understanding subsurface microbial responses to scCO2, or unnaturally high levels of dissolved CO2, will help to evaluate the use of geosequestrat...

A 4-yr study of spatial and temporal variability in the geochemistry of vadose groundwaters from caves within the Edwards aquifer region of central Texas offers new insights into controls on vadose groundwater evolution, the relationship between vadose and phreatic groundwaters, and the fundamental influence of soil composition on groundwater geochemistry. Variations in Sr isotopes and trace el...

Long-term data on nitrogen chemistry of streams draining Konza Prairie Biological Station (Konza), Kansas were analyzed to assess spatial and temporal patterns and examine the influence of agricultural activity on these patterns. Upland watersheds of Konza are predominantly tallgrass prairies, but agricultural fields and riparian forests border the lower reaches of the streams. We have up to 11...