Groundwater Discharge - The Water Cycle: There's More Water Than Just What You Can See

Groundwater Discharge - The Water Cycle
There's more water than just what you can see

Discharge of the Eastern Snake River Plain aquifer from basalt cliffs above the Snake River
gorge, Idaho, USA. The water flows from fissures along the same horizon. Faults, fractures,
and rock layers strongly influence the flow paths of groundwater.
Credit: USGS
You see water all around you every day as lakes, rivers, ice, rain and snow.
There are also vast amounts of water that are unseenwater existing in the
ground. And even though groundwater is unseen, it is moving below your
feet right now. As part of the water cycle, groundwater is a major
contributor to flow in many streams and rivers and has a strong influence on
river and wetland habitats for plants and animals. People have been using
groundwater for thousands of years and continue to use it today, largely for
drinking water and irrigation. Life on Earth depends on groundwater just as
it does on surface water.
There are rivers flowing below our feet ... a myth?
Have you ever heard that there are rivers of water flowing underground? Do
you think it is true? Actually, it is pretty much a myth. Even though there
are some caverns, lava and ice tubes, and horizontal springs that can carry
water, the vast majority of undergroundwater occupies the spaces between
rocks and subsurface material. Some rivers, such as the Alapaha River in
northern Florida, USA, can disappear underground during low-flow periods.
Generally, water underground is more like water in a sponge. It occupies the
spaces between soil and rock particles. At a certain depth below the land
surface, the spaces between the soil and rock particles can be totally filled
with water, resulting in an aquifer from which groundwater can be pumped
and used by people.

Groundwater flows underground
Some of
the precipitation that falls onto the land infiltrates into the ground to become
groundwater. Once in the ground, some of this water travels close to the
land surface and emerges very quickly as discharge into streambeds, but,
because of gravity, much of it continues to sink deeper into the ground. If
the water meets the water table (below which the soil is saturated), it can
move both vertically and horizontally. Water moving downward can also
meet more dense and water-resistant non-porous rock and soil, which
causes it to flow in a more horizontal fashion, generally towards streams,
the ocean, or deeper into the ground.
If groundwater wants to be a member in good standing of the water cycle,
then it can't be totally static and stay where it is. As the diagram shows, the
direction and speed of groundwater movement is determined by the various
characteristics of aquifers and confining layers of subsurface rocks (which
water has a difficult time penetrating) in the ground. Water moving below
ground depends on the permeability (how easy or difficult it is for water to
move) and on the porosity (the amount of open space in the material) of the
subsurface rock. If the rock has characteristics that allow water to move
relatively freely through it, then groundwater can move significant distances
in a number of days. But groundwater can also sink into deep aquifers where
it takes thousands of years to move back into the environment, or even go
into deep groundwater storage, where it might stay for much longer periods.

Sometimes when you dig a hole ... watch out!

If an aquifer is under enough pressure, an artesian well tapping the aquifer can result in
pressurized water shooting above the land surface.
Credit: USGS View full size
Bottled water is a very popular beverage nowadays all over the world.
Sometimes it is because the local drinking water is of lower quality and
sometimes it is just a convenience. Some bottled water is advertised as
"artesian well water". Is the water really any different than other
groundwater?
Artesian well water is not really different from non-artesian well water - but
it comes to the surface in a different manner. In the diagram above, you can
see that there are unconfined and confined aquifers in the ground. The
confinement of water in an aquifer, which can result in pressure, determines
if water coming from it is artesian or not. Wells drilled into confined aquifers
can yield artesian water.
Unconfined aquifers: In unconfined aquifers, water has simply
infiltrated from the surface and saturated the subsurface material. If
people drill a well into an unconfined aquifer, they have to install a
pump to push water to the surface.
Confined aquifers: Confined aquifers have layers of rock above and
below it that are not very permeable to water. Natural pressure in the
aquifer can exist; pressure which can sometimes be enough to push
water in a well above the land surface. No, not all confined aquifers
produce artesian water, but, as this picture of an artesian well in
Georgia, USA shows, artesian pressure can force water to the surface
with great pressure.
So, in what way is bottled artesian well water different from other well
water? Mainly, the company that bottles it doesn't have to go to the expense
of installing a pump in their well, so wouldn't you think that artesian water
should be cheaper than non-artesian water?
Groundwater and global water distribution
As these charts show, even though the amount of
water locked up in groundwater is a small percentage of all of Earth's water,
it represents a large percentage of total freshwater on Earth. The pie chart
shows that about 1.7 percent of all of Earth's water is groundwater and
about 30.1 percent of freshwater on Earth occurs as groundwater. As the bar
chart shows, about 5,614,000 cubic miles (mi
3
), or 23,400,000 cubic
kilometers (km
3
), of groundwater exist on Earth. About 54 percent is saline,
with the remaining 2,526,000 mi
3
(10,530,000 km
3
) , about 46 percent,
being freshwater.
One estimate of global water distribution
Water
source
Water
volume,
in cubic
miles
Water
volume,
in cubic
kilometers
Percent
of total
water
Percent of
total
freshwater
Fresh
groundwater
2,526,000 10,530,000 0.8% 30.1%
Groundwater 5,614,000 23,400,000 1.7% --
Total global
water
332,500,000 1,386,000,000 -- --
Source: Gleick, P. H., 1996: Water resources. In Encyclopedia of Climate and
Weather, ed. by S. H. Schneider, Oxford University Press, New York, vol. 2,
pp.817-823.
Sources and more information
Ground Water and Surface Water A Single Resource, USGS Circular
1139
NASA Earth Observatory; The Water Cycle
USGS: Groundwater data for the Nation
USGS Ground Water Atlas of the United States

Choose a water-cycle topic

A - Storage in ice
and snow
B - Precipitation
C - Snowmelt runoff
to streams
D - Infiltration
E - Groundwater
discharge
F - Groundwater
storage
G - Water storage in
oceans
H - Evaporation
I - Condensation
J - Water storage in the
atmosphere
K - Evapotranspiration
L - Surface runoff
M - Streamflow
N - Springs
O - Freshwater storage
P - Sublimation

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There's more water than just what you can see

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