Groundwater Monitoring

Groundwater resources are vital for drinking water supply, irrigation, the sustainability of wetlands and rivers as well as many other important issues, including climate change adaptation.  The state of groundwater resources needs to be monitored regularly to provide the basis for their assessment and to estimate their quantity and quality. Without an appropriate assessment and prediction there could be no effective groundwater management.

Groundwater is monitored in many parts of the world by measuring groundwater levels, groundwater abstraction rates, spring discharge and groundwater quality. Groundwater level point measurements are often interpolated and combined with other data (e.g. remote sensing and modelling) to assess the state of groundwater resources.

There is however, a lack of information on groundwater monitoring at the regional and global scales, which hampers assessment and informed water management. Recognizing the need for a systematic collection of groundwater data, IGRAC took initiative to establish the Global Groundwater Monitoring Network (GGMN).