Proposals for the Groundwater Preservation toward 21<sup>st</sup> Century through the View Point of Hydrological Cycle

Abstract

Recently, many reports have been published about the groundwater environment problems caused by human activities. We have to consider the concept of groundwater preservation toward the next century to supply safe and enough water resources for our descendants. The 2nd joint symposium of Japanese Association of Hydrological Sciences and Japanese Association of Groundwater Hydrology was held on May 28, 1998 at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, with the title of “Present and future groundwater environment and the proposals for the 21st century”. The author reported the proposals for the groundwater preservation toward 21st century through the view point of hydrological cycle, suggesting the importance of the groundwater flow system study to the better management of groundwater resources. In the text, to understand the regional scale groundwater flow system, the author stressed on the importance of the complemental use of the numerical groundwater flow simulation with the help of in-situ groundwater potential measurements and of the environmental isotope information in the groundwater.