{"id":98100,"date":"2023-03-21T11:01:21","date_gmt":"2023-03-21T11:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bgs.ac.uk\/?p=98100"},"modified":"2024-03-12T10:22:44","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T10:22:44","slug":"a-tale-of-two-groundwaters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bgs.ac.uk\/news\/a-tale-of-two-groundwaters\/","title":{"rendered":"A tale of two groundwaters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The UN Water Conference<\/a> in New York on 22-24 March, is billed as the most important water event in a generation. The conference will review progress halfway through the International Decade for Action on Water for Sustainable Development and encourage new commitments, pledges and actions by governments and all stakeholders towards achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6<\/a>: access to water and sanitation for all.  Access to water is also needed to achieve many other Sustainable Development Goals, but progress is alarmingly off track.  It is estimated that a quarter of the global population use unsafe drinking water<\/a> sources, with water sources becoming increasingly polluted and overexploited<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Developing and protecting groundwater is fundamental to achieving water related targets, but groundwater is out of sight and therefore often invisible to public and politician alike<\/a>.  Nearly all unfrozen freshwater on the earth is groundwater (>97%), locked away in the rocks beneath our feet. Excess rainfall not used by plants, or flows into rivers, infiltrates through the soil to the rocks beneath, where it flows through small pore spaces between grains and crystals, or through cracks and fractures, to reappear in rivers, springs or wetlands – years, centuries or even millennia later.<\/p>\n\n\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Information\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

An Introduction to Hydrology – Alan MacDonald<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t

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