Hydrogeology articles within Nature Geoscience

Featured

  • Perspective |

    Continuous and discoverable observations of water potential could vastly improve understanding of biophysical processes throughout the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum and are achievable thanks to recent technological advances.

    • Kimberly A. Novick
    • , Darren L. Ficklin
    •  & Jeffrey D. Wood

  • Article |

    Drainage divides between coastal plain channel networks can be constructed through depositional, rather than erosional, processes according to a lidar-based topographic analysis of the Gulf of Mexico coastal plain.

    • John M. Swartz
    • , Benjamin T. Cardenas
    •  & Paola Passalacqua

  • News & Views |

    Wet rice cultivation in the Palu Valley, Indonesia, prepared the ground for the devastating liquefaction-induced landslides that were triggered by the Mw 7.5 earthquake in 2018, suggest two studies of the spatial relationship between landslide morphology and irrigation.

    • Phil R. Cummins

  • News & Views |

    Geoscientists are training computers to learn from a wide range of geologic data and, in the process, the machines are teaching geoscientists about the workings of Earth.

    • Chris Marone

  • Commentary |

    The terrestrial water cycle is often assessed annually at catchment scale. But water stored in catchments is poorly mixed, and at timescales often well beyond the calculation of annual water balance.

    • Jeffrey J. McDonnell

  • Article |

    The brittle–ductile transition is thought to control crustal permeability. Laboratory experiments and model simulations show that permeability is also stress dependent and ductile granitic rocks may have enough permeability to host geothermal resources.

    • Noriaki Watanabe
    • , Tatsuya Numakura
    •  & Noriyoshi Tsuchiya

  • News & Views |

    Increasing groundwater extraction supports hundreds of millions of people across the Indo-Gangetic Basin. Data suggests that despite the increase in withdrawals, groundwater depletion is localized and the most widespread threat is contamination.

    • Scott Fendorf
    •  & Shawn G. Benner

  • Letter |

    The mechanisms for mantle hydration are unclear. Seismic images offshore from Spain reveal a correlation between the amount of seawater-altered rocks and the extent of fault slip, suggesting that faults control water flux into the Earth.

    • G. Bayrakci
    • , T. A. Minshull
    •  & J. K. Morgan

  • Editorial |

    Groundwater flow meddles with hydrological, environmental and geological processes. As water scarcity issues mount for people living above ground, the vast stores of freshwater in the subsurface require research attention.

  • Commentary |

    Drought management is inefficient because feedbacks between drought and people are not fully understood. In this human-influenced era, we need to rethink the concept of drought to include the human role in mitigating and enhancing drought.

    • Anne F. Van Loon
    • , Tom Gleeson
    •  & Henny A. J. Van Lanen

  • Letter |

    Groundwater flow redistributes heat in the Earth’s crust. Numerical simulations of groundwater flow show net cooling of groundwater basins, as well as cooling of the underlying lithosphere in areas where groundwater flows over large distances.

    • Henk Kooi

  • Letter |

    Streamflow is a mixture of precipitation of various ages. Oxygen isotope data suggests that a third of global river discharge is sourced from rainfall within the past few months, which accounts for less than 0.1% of global groundwater.

    • Scott Jasechko
    • , James W. Kirchner
    •  & Jeffrey J. McDonnell

  • News & Views |

    A global picture of the age structure and flow path of groundwater is lacking. Tritium concentrations and numerical modelling shed light on both the most recently replenished and the longest stored groundwater within Earth's continents.

    • Ying Fan

  • Article |

    Groundwater recharged less than 50 years ago is vulnerable to contamination and land-use changes. Data and simulations suggest that up to 6% of continental groundwater is modern—forming the largest component of the active hydrologic cycle.

    • Tom Gleeson
    • , Kevin M. Befus
    •  & M. Bayani Cardenas

  • Letter |

    Helium-4 is produced in the Earth’s crust and degassed to the atmosphere. Measurements of 4He and 81Kr dating in an aquifer in Brazil suggest that most crustal 4He reaches the atmosphere by the discharge of deep groundwater at the surface.

    • Pradeep K. Aggarwal
    • , Takuya Matsumoto
    •  & Thomas Torgersen

  • News & Views |

    Earthquake prediction is a long-sought goal. Changes in groundwater chemistry before earthquakes in Iceland highlight a potential hydrogeochemical precursor, but such signals must be evaluated in the context of long-term, multiparametric data sets.

    • S. E. Ingebritsen
    •  & M. Manga

  • Letter |

    The formation and preservation of sandstone landforms such as pillars and arches is enigmatic. Experiments and numerical modelling show that load-bearing material weathers more slowly, and thus the internal stress field can shape and stabilize sandstone landforms.

    • Jiri Bruthans
    • , Jan Soukup
    •  & Jaroslav Rihosek

  • Commentary |

    Expansion of geothermal energy use across the globe is restricted by out-of-date prejudices. It is time for geothermal exploration to be extended to a broader range of environments and rejuvenated with the latest insights from relevant geoscience disciplines.

    • Paul L. Younger

  • Research Highlights |

    • Amy Whitchurch

  • Article |

    The subsurface of Mars could potentially have contained a vast microbial biosphere. An evaluation of the possibility of groundwater upwelling, which might provide clues to subsurface habitability, reveals evidence in the deep McLaughlin crater for clays and carbonates that probably formed in an alkaline, groundwater-fed lacustrine setting.

    • Joseph R. Michalski
    • , Javier Cuadros
    •  & Shawn P. Wright

  • Commentary |

    Multiple factors determine how much water is and will be available in the river basins of Asia. To expose hotspots and help adaptation, these factors must be assessed together at the basin level.

    • W. W. Immerzeel
    •  & M. F. P. Bierkens

  • News & Views |

    In 2011, a modest earthquake in southern Spain seriously damaged the city of Lorca. Analysis of surface deformation suggests that the quake was caused by rupture of a shallow fault patch brought closer to failure by the pumping of water from a nearby aquifer.

    • Jean-Philippe Avouac

  • Research Highlights |

    • Anna Armstrong

  • Article |

    Arsenic contamination of groundwater threatens the health of millions of people in southeast Asia. Measurements in an arsenic-contaminated aquifer in Vietnam point to sediment age as a key determinant of groundwater arsenic concentrations.

    • Dieke Postma
    • , Flemming Larsen
    •  & Andrew S. Murray

  • Letter |

    The Bonnet Carré Spillway diverts floodwaters from the Mississippi River to Lake Pontchartrain, and was opened for 42 days during the 2011 flood. According to measurements of the newly deposited sediments, at least 31–46% of the river’s sand load was diverted into the spillway at this time, suggesting that such diversions can help mitigate coastal wetland loss.

    • Jeffrey A. Nittrouer
    • , James L. Best
    •  & Gary Parker

  • Letter |

    Changes in terrestrial water storage are likely to affect sea level, but comprehensive and reliable data are scarce. Simulations of global terrestrial water stocks and flows, with an integrated model that specifically accounts for human activities, indicate that groundwater depletion and reservoir storage have together led to a sea-level rise of about 0.66 mm yr−1 between 1961 and 2003, about 36% of the observed rise.

    • Yadu N. Pokhrel
    • , Naota Hanasaki
    •  & Taikan Oki

  • Article |

    Carbon capture and geological storage represents a potential means of managing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels. An analysis of a 135,000 palaeorecord shows that pulses of carbon dioxide leakage from a natural reservoir in Utah are associated with episodes of glacial unloading.

    • Niko Kampman
    • , Neil M. Burnside
    •  & Mike J. Bickle

  • Letter |

    An increasing amount of freshwater has been stored in the Arctic Ocean over the past few decades. Satellite measurements of sea surface height reveal a spin-up of the Beaufort Gyre in the western Arctic that is associated with changes in the wind field, and is estimated to have led to the additional storage of about 8,000 km3 of freshwater.

    • Katharine A. Giles
    • , Seymour W. Laxon
    •  & Sheldon Bacon

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