Sustainability

25Sustainable Systems for Groundwater Resource Management

Manish Kumar Goyal¹, Srinidhi Jha¹, and Rao Y. Surampalli²

¹Discipline of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Indore, India

²Global Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability, Lenexa, KS, USA

25.1 Introduction

Groundwater is arguably one of the most vital natural resources. Out of the total water availability on planet earth, only 2.5% is present in the form of freshwater, most of which is in inaccessible to the human population. About 69% of the whole volume of freshwater is stored in the form of glaciers and ice caps, and the other 31% exists in and above the earth's crust as groundwater (30%) and surface water (1%). The total amount of groundwater is estimated to be much larger than surface water, and it is important to mention that a fraction of this water is saline. For example, subsurface water in the arid zones is often found to be unsuitable for drinking purposes because it rarely goes through renewal in thousands of years. Despite all the limitations, groundwater resources are of great value, especially in developing and underdeveloped countries as a large proportion of the population in these countries sees groundwater as a feasible source of fresh water. The distribution of surface water resources is similar to groundwater resources, but surface water is more susceptible to evaporation losses in the dry and hot seasons. Groundwater, on the other hand, is safe from such losses in comparison ...