Groundwater may be the most important substance on Earth that most people have never heard of, yet it has quietly influenced the evolution of human culture since its earliest beginnings. The predominant physicalist ontology of modernity has created such a powerful conceptual representation of groundwater, that seemingly incredible benefits have accrued to society globally via our ability to understand and relate to it in this...

European colonialism altered the connections between First Peoples, local communities, and groundwater systems across the world. In many countries, the practice of hydrogeology remains intertwined with the economic agendas of colonial settler communities, making colonialism a useful lens through which to consider our work. This paper briefly summarizes connections between First Peoples, local communities and groundwater, as we...

Understanding subsurface heat transport processes is important for geothermal energy development and heat-flow modelling applications, and for resolving hydrogeological, biogeochemical and microbiological processes. Studies of subsurface thermal regimes have predominantly focussed on repeat temperature-depth profile analysis. The application of groundwater temperature time-series data to characterise thermal and hydraulic proc...

Hydraulic properties of coastal, urban aquifers vary spatially and temporally with the complex dynamics of their hydrogeology and the heterogeneity of ocean-influenced hydraulic processes. Traditional aquifer characterisation methods are expensive, time-consuming and represent a snapshot in time. Tidal subsurface analysis (TSA) can passively characterise subsurface processes and establish hydro-geomechanical properties from gr...

There is a scarcity of long-term groundwater hydrographs from sub-Saharan Africa to investigate groundwater sustainability, processes and controls. This paper presents an analysis of 21 hydrographs from semi-arid South Africa. Hydrographs from 1980 to 2000 were converted to standardised groundwater level indices and rationalised into four types (C1–C4) using hierarchical cluster analysis. Mean hydrographs for each type were cr...

A groundwater recharge investigation in the arid zone of Australia is presented. The investigation used a wide range of hydrogeological techniques including geological mapping, surface and borehole geophysics, groundwater hydraulics, streambed temperature and pressure monitoring, and hydrogeochemical and environmental tracer sampling, and it was complemented by analysis of rainfall intensity from 18 tipping-bucked rain gauges,...

Groundwater is an important global resource and its sustainable use faces major challenges. New methods and advances in computational science could lead to much improved understanding of groundwater processes and subsurface properties. A closer look at current groundwater monitoring practice reveals the need for updates with a special focus on the benefits of high-frequency and high-resolution datasets. To future-proof hydroge...