Introduction

Although this may seem surprising, water beneath the ground is commonplace. Usually groundwater travels slowly and silently beneath the surface, but in some locations it bubbles to the surface at springs. The products of erosion and deposition by groundwater were described in the Erosion and Deposition chapter.

Groundwater

Groundwater is the largest reservoir of liquid fresh water on Earth and is found in aquifers, porous rock and sediment with water in between. Water is attracted to the soil particles and capillary action, which describes how water moves through a porous media, moves water from wet soil to dry areas.

Aquifers are found at different depths. Some are just below the surface and some are found much deeper below the land surface. A region may have more than one aquifer beneath it and even most deserts are above aquifers. The source region for an aquifer beneath a desert is likely to be far from where the aquifer is located; for example, it may be in a mountain area.

The amount of water that is available to enter groundwater in a region is influenced by the local climate, the slope of the land, the type of rock found at the surface, the vegetation cover, land use in the area, and water retention, which is the amount of water that remains in the ground. More water goes into the ground where there is a lot of rain, flat land, porous rock, exposed soil, and where water is not already filling the soil and rock.

The residence time of water in a groundwater aquifer can be from minutes to thousands of years. Groundwater is often called “fossil water” because it has remained in the ground for so long, often since the end of the ice ages.

Aquifers

Features of an Aquifer

To be a good aquifer, the rock in the aquifer must have good:

• porosity: small spaces between grains
• permeability: connections between pores

This animation shows porosity and permeability. The water droplets are found in the pores between the sediment grains, which is porosity. When the water can travel between ores, that’s permeability.

To reach an aquifer, surface water infiltrates downward into the ground through tiny spaces or pores in the rock. The water travels down through the permeable rock until it reaches a layer that does not have pores; this rock is impermeable (figure 1). This impermeable rock layer forms the base of the aquifer. The upper surface where the groundwater reaches is the water table.

Figure 1. Groundwater is found beneath the solid surface. Notice that the water table roughly mirrors the slope of the land’s surface. A well penetrates the water table.

The Water Table

For a groundwater aquifer to contain the same amount of water, the amount of recharge must equal the amount of discharge. What are the likely sources of recharge? What are the likely sources of discharge?

Figure 2. The top of the stream is the top of the water table. The stream feeds the aquifer.

In wet regions, streams are fed by groundwater; the surface of the stream is the top of the water table (figure 2). In dry regions, water seeps down from the stream into the aquifer. These streams are often dry much of the year. Water leaves a groundwater reservoir in streams or springs. People take water from aquifers, too.

What happens to the water table when there is a lot of rainfall? What happens when there is a drought? Although groundwater levels do not rise and fall as rapidly as at the surface, over time the water table will rise during wet periods and fall during droughts.

One of the most interesting, but extremely atypical types of aquifers is found in Florida. Although aquifers are very rarely underground rivers, in Florida water has dissolved the limestone so that streams travel underground and above ground (figure 3).

Figure 3. In Florida, groundwater is sometimes not underground.

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