The Groundwater Project Foreword

The Year 2022 marks as an important year for groundwater because the United Nations Water Members and Partners chosen the theme of this year’s March 22 World Water Day to be: “Groundwater: making the invisible visible”. The goal of the Groundwater Project (GW-Project) is in sync with this theme.

The GW-Project, a registered charity in Canada, is committed to contributing to advancement in groundwater education and brings a unique approach to the creation and dissemination of knowledge for understanding and problem solving. The GW-Project operates the website https://gw-project.org/ as a global platform for the democratization of groundwater knowledge, founded on the principle that:

“Knowledge should be free and the best knowledge should be free knowledge.” Anonymous

The mission of the GW-Project is promoting groundwater learning. This is accomplished by providing accessible, engaging, high-quality, educational materials, free-of-charge online in many languages, to all who want to learn about groundwater. In short, providing essential knowledge tools for developing groundwater sustainably for humanity and ecosystems.

This is a new type of global educational endeavor in that it is based on volunteerism of professionals from different disciplines and includes academics, consultants and retirees. The GW-Project involves many hundreds of volunteers associated with more than 200 hundred organizations from 27 countries and six continents, with growing participation.

The GW-Project is an on-going endeavor and will continue with hundreds of books being published online over the coming years, first in English and then in other languages, for downloading wherever the Internet is available. An important tenet of the GW-Project books is a strong emphasis on visualization via clear illustrations that stimulate spatial and critical thinking to facilitate absorption of information.

The GW-Project publications also include supporting materials such as videos, lectures, laboratory demonstrations, and learning tools in addition to providing, or linking to, public domain software for various groundwater applications supporting the educational process.

The GW-Project is a living entity, so subsequent editions of the books will be published from time to time. Users are invited to propose revisions.

We thank you for being part of the GW-Project Community. We hope to hear from you about your experience with using the books and related material. We welcome ideas and volunteers!

The GW-Project Steering Committee
January 2022