Preface

Underground aquifers are the water source for 70% of the world’s irrigation use. Many of these aquifers have experienced steep drops in water pressure and are endangered from over consumption. Exporting a tomato or an almond is a transfer from a region’s water bank. The invisibility of groundwater makes its management dependent on understanding the geological setting and physics of extraction. When large numbers of non native settlers began farming in the Dakota Territory of the United States in the latter part of the 19th century, the United States Geological Survey undertook groundwater studies that would continue for nearly a century. This book provides a historical introduction to discovery of the role of aquifer deformation in response to pumping wells.

The author of this book has engaged in several decades of teaching and research in the disciplines of rock mechanics and hydrogeology. This book is based on the author’s hydrogeology lecture on the “Saga of the Dakota Sandstone” in which the moral of the story is that study of the removal of groundwater from confined aquifers is where the two disciplines meet.