We report on a field test of a transportable version of a superconducting gravimeter (SG) intended for groundwater storage monitoring. The test was conducted over a 6-month period at a site adjacent to a well in the recharge zone of the karstic Edwards Aquifer, a major groundwater resource in central Texas. The purpose of the study was to assess requirements for unattended operation of the SG i...

Modeling groundwater vulnerability to pollution is critical for implementing programs to protect groundwater quality. Most groundwater vulnerability modeling has been based on current hydrogeology and land use conditions. However, groundwater vulnerability is strongly dependent on factors such as depth-to-water, recharge and land use conditions that may change in response to future changes in c...

Earthquakes are among the most destructive natural events. The 6 April 2009, 6.3-Mw earthquake in L'Aquila (Italy) markedly altered the karstic Gran Sasso Aquifer (GSA) hydrogeology and geochemistry. The GSA groundwater invertebrate community is mainly comprised of small-bodied, colourless, blind microcrustaceans. We compared abiotic and biotic data from two pre-earthquake and one post-earthqua...

Nowadays the use of remote sensing and Geographic Information System (GIS) is one of the most powerful cost effective tools to identify and discover the available groundwater resources. In this paper, Lithological Units, Lineaments, Slope, Topography, Drainage density, Vegetation and Isohyets lines have been achieved by stations and through remote sensing and GIS techniques. All layers of diffe...

In this paper, we present a nature-inspired, hierarchical patch dynamics paradigm for modeling complex groundwater systems across multiple scales – one that has the potential to substantially alleviate the infamous “curse of dimensionality” and the associated computational bottlenecks. The new modeling paradigm is inspired by the observations on how biological systems have been doing a great jo...

One of the largest karst springs in North China, the Jinci Springs, dried up and has remained dry since 1994. We develop a correlation analysis with time-lag and a regression analysis with time-lag to study the relation between spring flow and precipitation. This allows us to obtain a better understanding of karst hydrological processes by differentiating the contribution of variation in precip...

Fungi are one important group of eukaryotic microorganisms in a diverse range of ecosystems, but their diversity in groundwater ecosystems is largely unknown. We used DNA-based pyro-tag sequencing of the fungal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) rDNA gene to investigate the presence and community structure of fungi at different sampling sites of two superimposed limestone aquifers ranging from 8...

The Swanscombe area of Kent, SE England represents a typical example of a heavily quarried Chalk area currently undergoing re-development. Because the Chalk is also an important aquifer, a good understanding of groundwater movement is required if environmental impacts are to be minimised and the water resource maximised. In particular, the nature of the relationship between the River Darent and...

In this paper, we present an object-oriented hierarchical patch dynamics paradigm (HPDP) for modeling complex groundwater systems across multiple-scales e one that has the potential to significantly alleviate the infamous ‘‘curse-of-dimensionality’’ and the associated computational bottlenecks. The HPDP takes advantage of hierarchy theory, divides and conquers complexities, and decouples scale-...