The Edwards Aquifer: The Past, Present, and Future of a Vital Water Resource
CONTAINS OPEN ACCESS

The Edwards aquifer system is one of the great karstic aquifer systems of the world. It supplies water for more than 2 million people and for agricultural, municipal, industrial, and recreational uses. The Edwards (Balcones Fault Zone) Aquifer in the San Antonio, Texas, area was the first to be designated a sole source aquifer by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1975. The Edwards Aquifer also hosts unique groundwater, cave, and spring ecosystems. This 27-chapter memoir reviews the current state of knowledge, current and emerging challenges to wise use of the aquifer system, and some of the technologies that must be adopted to address these challenges.
Climate variability, climate change, and Edwards Aquifer water fluxes Available to Purchase
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Published:September 10, 2019
ABSTRACT
The Edwards (Balcones Fault Zone) Aquifer is a high-yield aquifer that provides water for municipal, military, irrigation, domestic, and livestock uses in south-central Texas, and it discharges to several springs that support groundwater ecosystems. Natural water cycling in the Edwards (Balcones Fault Zone) Aquifer is driven by recharge, which depends on precipitation and runoff over the catchment area and recharge zone of the aquifer. This chapter analyzes the water fluxes in the Edwards (Balcones Fault Zone) Aquifer and how they vary with climatic variability and might vary with modern-age climatic change. This work also evaluates the safe yield of the Edwards (Balcones Fault Zone) Aquifer under historic climatic conditions, which is ~400 thousand acre · feet, or 493 × 106 m3, annually. These results have implications for aquifer groundwater extraction and human and environmental water requirements, such that future groundwater extraction must be adaptive to precipitation and recharge fluctuations to preserve groundwater ecosystems.
- annual variations
- artesian waters
- atmospheric precipitation
- Balcones fault zone
- climate change
- climatic controls
- decadal variations
- discharge
- drainage basins
- drinking water
- drought
- ecosystems
- Edwards Aquifer
- Edwards Plateau
- fault zones
- faults
- ground water
- hydraulic head
- preservation
- recharge
- runoff
- streamflow
- Texas
- United States
- water use
- water yield
- south-central Texas