Groundwater for the 21st Century: A Primer for Citizens of Planet Earth

Abstract

Although the daily water needs of 2.5 billion people worldwide are met with groundwater (UNESCO 2012), only a small percentage of the world’s population has any formal education in hydrogeology. Thus, there is a profound need for educational materials that introduce hydrogeology in a manner that is accessible to a wide audience, including nonscientists. Conners (2013) recognizes and addresses this need with his book, Groundwater for the 21st Century: A Primer for Citizens of Planet Earth . In the preface, Conners describes his book as “a broad flexible resource” that “does not have pages filled with differential equations” and is also not a “‘popular science’ book, filled with human interest stories” but that does “provide a basic understanding of groundwater science . . . in a manner that is accessible to all.” (viii). To make the book both widely accessible and applicable, Conners includes chapters on basic scientific and geologic principles, global water resources issues, and applied hydrogeology, in addition to covering the fundamentals of hydrogeology. As a consequence of being broad, the book is rather long. With 614 pages, 14 chapters, and 3 appendices, I suspect some readers, particularly those without a scientific background, might be overwhelmed by the book’s size. In my opinion the book is unnecessarily broad and long. Although the basic science and geology chapters provide background for later chapters, they also cover several topics (e.g., subatomic chemistry, plate tectonics, modes of crustal deformation, and periglacial geology) that are well beyond the background necessary for a general, nontechnical understanding of hydrogeology and groundwater resources. The readability of the text and Conners’s professional yet unintimidating writing style are notable. Several case studies are presented in boxes throughout the book and these very effectively elucidate the applicability of the