Preface

Hydrogeology is a science that deals with understanding the occurrence and movement of fluids in the subsurface, or underground. I have been a practicing hydrogeologist for just over three decades. During most of that time, including while I was a doctoral candidate at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, I worked in the industry as a consultant primarily on water resource and regulatory compliance projects.

Between 2001 and 2006, and again from 2014–2015, I taught university‑level courses in hydrogeology at several different institutions. My classes included a wide variety of students, including geology students in an undergraduate geoscience department, both engineering and geoscience students at a Tier-1 research university, undergraduate students with little geoscience background, and graduate students in aquatic biology and environmental science. I realized very early in my teaching career that I did not like the way any of the available textbooks presented the material. Much of my dissatisfaction came from my experience working both in industry and in academia—I had a clear idea of what the key concepts were and in what order they should be provided. I concluded that even though all the textbooks I reviewed were good comprehensive resources, they were not appropriate for providing direct support for an introductory hydrogeology class.

Initially, I felt I owed it to my students to provide them with study materials that directly supported the concepts I was teaching, and I spent a tremendous amount of time preparing notes and graphics for each of my lectures so the students could focus on what I wanted them to learn. During a final exam review session at the end of one of those semesters, I noticed most of the students had printed out all the notes and put them in three‑ring binders. I realized that those notes constituted the framework of a textbook.

Over the years, I refined my lecture notes, always using them as the primary teaching tool for my classes. At various times I considered formally publishing, but I never got much further than a few inquiries and discussions with potential co‑authors. I have since decided that I can best serve the global hydrogeology community by developing my lecture notes into a formal textbook and publishing them for free access and use through The Groundwater Project.

My intent is not to produce another comprehensive treatment on the science of hydrogeology. Plenty of those already exist, including the classic Groundwater↗ by Freeze and Cherry (1979), as well the books by Fitts (2022), Fetter (2001), and Domenico and Schwartz (1998). Rather, my objective is to produce a textbook that fits my idea of what a textbook should be—a guide for teaching and learning the fundamentals. This book is therefore designed for university teachers and students who need an introduction to key concepts and for those practitioners who may want a simple desk reference. If you are one of those people, I hope that you find this manuscript useful.