The Groundwater Project

How do we teach students about a resource they cannot see? 💧

🌍 Groundwater makes up 99% of Earth's liquid fresh water. It feeds rivers, sustains wetlands, and provides drinking water to billions. But because it's underground, it's hard to visualize — and even harder to teach.

The Groundwater Project has a solution: a free Introductory Collection of books and interactive tools that make groundwater science accessible to everyone.

🌟 New Featured Tool: An Interactive Physical Three-Dimensional Water Table Model Teaching Tool (2026)
This new publication gives instructors everything they need to build an inexpensive, classroom-scale 3D model using PVC tubes. Students get to act like real hydrogeologists — they measure water levels in model wells, calculate hydraulic heads, draw equipotential maps, and determine groundwater flow directions in both 2D and 3D.

The model is adaptable for:
• University hydrogeology courses and labs
• High school science modules
• Field camps
• Community outreach and continuing education
A full parts list with costs is included, so any educator can build it.

📚 The Introductory Collection also includes these free titles (among others):
• Groundwater in Our Water Cycle (Poeter et al., 2020) — A perfect starting point for understanding Earth's freshwater.
• Basic Hydrogeology (Uliana, 2025) — A complete undergraduate textbook.
• Conceptual and Visual Understanding of Hydraulic Head and Groundwater Flow (Cohen & Cherry, 2020) — Learn with minimal math, maximum visuals.
• Using Groundwater Head Maps (Toran, 2025) — Practical map-making for environmental consulting.
• A Glossary of Hydrogeology (Sharp, 2023) — Your go-to reference for terminology.

🔧 Don't miss the Interactive Education section of the website, where digital tools like the WTR – Water Table Recharge simulator let students explore groundwater dynamics online: Interactive Education | The Groundwater Project

🔗 Explore the full Introductory Collection: https://gw-project.org/books-category/introductory/

💬 Have you ever tried teaching or learning about groundwater? What made it click for you — a diagram, a model, a field trip? Share your story in the comments!

Did you know that microorganisms are responsible for an estimated 40% of internal corrosion across industrial sectors?

Microbially Influenced Corrosion (MIC) is a hidden but costly problem in oil, gas, and mining. Unlike purely chemical corrosion, MIC is driven by living microbes that adapt to their environment and often go unnoticed until significant damage has occurred.

In a detailed webinar, Dora Taggart, President and CEO of Microbial Insights, Inc. — a proud sponsor of the Groundwater Project — explains how Molecular Biological Tools (MBTs) are helping industries detect, monitor, and manage MIC with precision. Tools like qPCR and next generation sequencing provide accurate, unbiased data about the microbial communities at work, enabling smarter, more targeted mitigation strategies.

The webinar is now available online. Whether you work in corrosion management, environmental science, or groundwater, it is well worth watching.
Watch it here: https://microbe.com/webinar/tackling-microbially-influenced-corrosion-mic-in-oil-gas-and-mining-leveraging-molecular-biological-tools-for-effective-management/

Read the full blog at https://gw-project.org/blog/

We had the privilege of interviewing the brilliant minds at KGS Group founding partner Bert Smith, Jason Mann, and Bonnie Hoffensetz, about their incredible work protecting groundwater during the 50km Winnipeg Floodway Expansion.

Beyond their groundbreaking engineering, KGS Group explained why they are proud founding sponsors of the Groundwater Project and active supporters of Lifewater Canada, helping to bring clean drinking water to communities in Africa and Haiti.

For KGS Group, hydrogeology is more than a business, it's about:
1️⃣ Honoring the legacy of great mentors (like Dr. John Cherry!)
2️⃣ Empowering the next generation of engineers with free, high-quality textbooks in 60+ languages.
3️⃣ Stepping out of the books, putting on the field boots, and finding real-world, sustainable solutions.

Curious to know how they used "reverse sand filters" to clean floodwater? Or why they chose to widen a channel instead of deepening it to protect a regional aquifer?

👉 Click the link to read the blog post https://gw-project.org/blog/
and watch the full interview on our YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/The Groundwater Project

🌍 Water education should be accessible to everyone!

A goal of the project is to translate the Glossary of Hydrogeology into the 11 most widely spoken languages in the world. Of these 2 are published (English and French), 3 are underway and we seek volunteer translations into:

🔸 Hindi 🔸 Arabic 🔸 Bengali 🔸 Indonesian 🔸 Russian 🔸 Urdu

Why this matters:

Over 2.5 billion people depend on groundwater for their daily drinking water. Yet the science that governs how we understand, manage, and protect that water has historically been locked behind a single language. When hydrogeology education exists only in English, it creates a knowledge divide that affects students, professionals, and entire communities who need this expertise the most.

The 11 most spoken languages globally reach billions of speakers across every continent. By translating this essential reference into these languages, we are not just converting words. We are building local capacity, empowering water professionals in their native languages, and ensuring that the science of groundwater reaches the people who live with it every day.

This is what we mean by Making Groundwater Understandable.

If you have a background in hydrogeology or a related field and fluency in any of these languages, your contribution could directly expand access to groundwater science for millions of people.

Become part of a global movement to make hydrogeology education open, free, and multilingual. 💧

Groundwater: The Invisible Resource That Sustains Billions — And the Knowledge Gap That Threatens It

There is a global freshwater crisis. And one of its root causes is not scarcity, it's lack of understanding.

Over 2 billion people depend on groundwater for drinking, irrigation, and sanitation. Yet outside the hydrogeology community, awareness of this vital resource remains critically low, and so does the human capacity to manage it sustainably.
That's why The Groundwater Project exists.

Founded in 2017 by Dr. John Cherry, recipient of the 2020 Stockholm Water Prize, The Groundwater Project is a Canadian-registered charitable nonprofit with a clear mission: to create and provide free, high-quality groundwater educational materials to the world.
Led by a small staff and over 1,000 volunteers, including authors, reviewers, editors, and translators from across the globe, the Project has already achieved remarkable reach:
• 📚 Over 3 million free book downloads
• 🌐 Readers in virtually every country
• 🗣️ Materials available in multiple languages
• 🎯 Free access for students, professionals, and decision-makers worldwide

But this work depends entirely on you.

The Groundwater Project operates solely through private donations. And there are three powerful ways to contribute:
🕐 Donate your time: Help close the groundwater knowledge gap by volunteering as a translator. If you speak a language other than English and care about groundwater, science, or education, we invite you to join us.
💰 Donate your money: Every contribution helps produce new books, expand translations, support the coordination team, and keep all materials free. Donations are tax-deductible in Canada and the USA. Donate here →
🔁 Donate your reach: Perhaps the simplest yet most powerful act: share this message. Share it with a colleague, a student, a policymaker, or your entire network. Each share is a seed that can grow into awareness, action, and change.

💧 Groundwater is invisible, but its importance is not. Knowledge is the first step to protection, and you can help spread it.

➡️ Learn more and get involved: gw-project.org
🔹

🌍 Kabar baik untuk komunitas penutur Bahasa Indonesia!

The Groundwater Project is delighted to share the latest progress in making groundwater education more accessible to the Indonesian-speaking world.
Thanks to our dedicated volunteer translators, 3 books have now been fully translated into Indonesian, with another 5 books currently in progress. This growing collection reflects a shared commitment to connecting knowledge, language, and people through open education.

Bahasa Indonesian is spoken by over 255 million people worldwide, ranking among the top 10 most spoken languages. Yet Indonesia faces severe groundwater challenges — from over-extraction on Java to land subsidence in Jakarta and saltwater intrusion along its coasts. Making groundwater science available in Bahasa Indonesia is more important than ever.

But there's still meaningful work ahead. We're inviting volunteers to help translate the remaining books — so that readers across Indonesia and beyond can access this valuable knowledge.

If you care about groundwater, education, or scientific translation — and would like to support a collaborative mission — we'd love to welcome your contribution.

📩 Pertanyaan sukarelawan penerjemah: [email protected]

Together, through partnership and shared effort, we continue building a more inclusive future for groundwater knowledge worldwide.

🌍 How do we manage a resource we can't see? Modeling is a powerful tool for exploring subsurface flow, supporting groundwater management decisions, and helping protect our water future.

The Groundwater Project has highlighted two incredible new additions to our Modeling Collection:
📘 Analytical Hydrogeology of Inland and Coastal Unconfined Dupuit-Type Aquifers by Romain Chesnaux proves you don't always need complex software. This guide provides closed-form equations for flow and recharge, specifically targeting seawater intrusion and climate change. It’s an essential, low-cost toolkit for any practitioner or student.
📘 Analytical Groundwater Modeling: Jupyter Book Edition by Mark Bakker & Vincent Post brings flow theory to life. This Python-based resource features interactive figures and sliders that let you visualize flow fields in real-time. Best of all, you can copy the scripts directly into your own projects to solve site-specific problems.

To expand your expertise, you can also download these key titles for free:
● Getting Started with MODFLOW by Richard B. Winston: Master MODFLOW 6 with practical exercises.
● Geologic Frameworks for Groundwater Flow Models by J. P. Brandenburg: Build better models by interpreting geologic data correctly.
● An Interactive Physical Three-Dimensional Water Table Model Teaching Tool by William W. Woessner et al.: A physical tool for classroom flow visualization.
● Conjunctive Water Management by Richard S. Evans and Randall T. Hanson: Learn to manage surface and groundwater as one system.
Many of these publications also include author interviews, videos, and supplemental exercises!

🔗 Read Analytical Hydrogeology of Inland and Coastal Unconfined Dupuit-Type Aquifers: https://gw-project.org/books/

🔗 Access Analytical Groundwater Modeling: Jupyter Book Edition: https://gw-project.org/interactive-education/

🔗 Explore the full Modeling Collection: https://gw-project.org/books-category/modeling/

💬 What are the biggest groundwater modeling challenges you face in your projects? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!

🌊 Did you know the Groundwater Project has an incredible library of free videos?

Whether you're a professor looking for classroom visuals, a student trying to understand aquifer flow, or just someone curious about what happens beneath our feet, there's something for you.

They cover everything from children’s education, introductory groundwater topics and geology to contamination experiments. Watch the sand tank demonstrations to see how groundwater flows.

📹 Browse the videos here: https://gw-project.org/videos/

All free to use for teaching and learning. Just make sure to reference the Groundwater Project and share it with others who might benefit.

Donate to support our work and keep this knowledge open to everyone.