Groundwater

We all know the earth is full of water, but theres a lot more of water more than the blue stuff you see on the globe. The water that we can see on the surface of the earth is called surface water such as lake, river, stream, ocean. But in the ground below your feet theres even more water called groundwater.

Groundwater is water that’s crammed in tiny gaps between rocks, soils,  and sediment under the ground. A full body of groundwater is called an aquifer. There are huge aquifers all across America, the biggest high plain aquifer which cover a hundred and seventy thousand square miles right in the middle of the country.

Now I give another explanation about ground water.

Lets say you can grab a shovel and dig straight down the soils to an aquifer. The level underground where you first hit groundwater is called water table. Below the water table, the ground is completely soaked or saturated with water which is why this area is called the saturated zone. The area above the water table is called unsaturated zone. So how does all this water end up in the ground?

Well, this time to explain about water cycle.

When rain happen, some water gets soaked up by plants, some water runs off the soil and go intro streams lake or even the ocean. And other water get stucks on the surface and eventually evaporates back into the air. Meanwhile some of the lucky water droplets get to travel down through the surface deep underground until they reach the water table and become a part of an aquifer.

Once water seeps down enough into the ground and can stay there for a really long time. Some of water stored in the deepest parts of aquiffers has been there for a thousand of years, but after it gets there groundwater doesn’t always stay on the ground. A lot of water on the surfaces come from aquifers. If the surface of the groundwater dips below the water table, groundwater flows out into the space creating a body of surface water if the surface dries up, groundwater can flow into fill it back up and if the water table in this area rise so does the level of the surface water.

Groundwater can also pour down slopig surface creating streams. Any place where groundwater flows outinto the surface I called a spring. Surface water can also become groundwater if a body of surface water flows above the water table. Water can seep down through the sediment and help fill the aquifer of course there are another water that groundwater can leave the ground us.

Human depend on groundwater and there are thousand of well all over the country.

In many parts of the country, the water you get form the tap comes from the ground, however we use most of our groundwater to help grow the food we eat. Farms can get a lost of the water they need from rain but rain isn’t always enough and in dry years farmers depend even on water in the ground.

In fact, American farms use about 53 billion of waters everyday that’s enough to fill over a million bathubs or 80.000 olympic sized swimming pools, so if we use much every day, can it run out? 

Remember aquifers can be refilled by rain water or surface water seeping in from rivers and streams, so theres usually more water on its way to refill the aquifer but if we use groundwater faster than the aquifers can refill, we could drain them dry. They probably wouldn’t be empty forever but it would take hundreds of years for the largest aquifer to get back to healthy levels.

Whether its up here or down there water and how we use it matters, we may not be able to see it every day but groundwater makes our lives possible so don’t let show offs like rushing rivers and roaring ocean get all the attention those unseen aquifers below ground have been here longer than we have and with little love and care they’ll keep on taking care of us long into the future.

Information from :
- U.S. Geological Survey
- National Ground Water Association
- University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Picture from :
City Santa Rosa Water