GROUNDWATER SPECIAL EDITION

Groundwater is sometimes described as the “Cinderella” of water resources, since it is an often overlooked part of South Africa’s total water resource. The scientific study of groundwater – known as hydrogeology (or geohydrology) – is something of a hybrid, combining skills and techniques from several disciplines including mathematics, chemistry, economics and engineering. These skills must however conformably overlie a solid foundation of geological knowledge since the physical nature of any aquifer is fundamental to its groundwater resource. The formal subject of hydrogeology is also relatively new – for example it is estimated that prior to 1964 only five universities...