What factors affect the ground water?

What factors affect the ground water?

Natural factors, such as topographic position and the mineral composition of underlying geology, act to produce basic physical and geochemical conditions in groundwater that are reflected in physical properties, such as pH, temperature, specific conductance, and alkalinity, and in chemical concentrations of dissolved …

What are 3 factors affecting ground water levels?

Primary factors influencing the groundwater level included human activ- ities (e.g., changes in land use, river regulation, irrigation, and groundwater exploitation) and natural causes (e.g., climate and weather anomalies).

What causes the amount of groundwater to change?

Pumping aquifers causes groundwater levels to fall, affecting ecosystems and river discharge, and increasing salinity. Groundwater use is increasing as surface water resources become fully allocated, and as demand grows for water in drier regions in which groundwater is the predominant resource.

What are the two factors that influence how water gets into the ground?

The two most important forces controlling water movement in rock are gravity and molecular attraction. Gravity causes water to infiltrate until it reaches impermeable zones where it is diverted laterally. Gravity generates the flow of springs, rivers, and wells.

What are 4 effects of groundwater depletion?

Ground-water depletion is primarily caused by sustained ground-water pumping. Some of the negative effects of ground-water depletion include increased pumping costs, deterioration of water quality, reduction of water in streams and lakes, or land subsidence.

What factors affect the rate of groundwater flow quizlet?

What factors control the rate of groundwater flow? Groundwater flow rates are controlled by the permeability of the aquifer through which the water is flowing and by the local hydraulic gradient (the drop in hydraulic head per unit distance; equal to the slope of the water table for unconfined aquifers).

How does gravity affect groundwater?

The gravity change from Earth tides squeezes the sediment, and therefore changes the pressure of the water in the pores. Groundwater at that depth responds to these stress changes, which can be measured as tiny water level fluctuations inside a groundwater borehole.

What are the effects of overuse of water?

Furthermore, in places where clean water is scarce, overusing or wasting household water limits the availability of it for other communities to use for drinking, cleaning, cooking, or growing—and thus contributes to disease, illness, or agricultural scarcity and starvation.

What effect does the overuse of groundwater have on the environment?

Some human activities, such as pumping water into the ground for oil and gas extraction, can cause an aquifer to hold too much ground water. Too much ground water discharge to streams can lead to erosion and alter the balance of aquatic plant and animal species.

What are the effects of the overuse and depletion of groundwater?

When groundwater is overused, the lakes, streams, and rivers connected to groundwater can also have their supply diminished. Land subsidence occurs when there is a loss of support below ground.

What can affect the quality of surface and groundwater?

Many factors affect the quality of surface and groundwater. Water moving over or under the land surface can undergo physical and chemical changes. These changes may be caused by either natural factors or human activities. Contaminants can impair water quality and affect water use.

Why does groundwater flow from high to low?

There’s one more important factor in groundwater movement, and that’s gravity. Gravity doesn’t just pull objects down to the surface of Earth; it also pulls some things down through the ground. All water flows downhill because gravity causes it to do so, so both surface and groundwater flow from high to low.

How are droughts and overpumping affect groundwater levels?

Droughts, seasonal variations in rainfall, and pumping affect the height of the under groundwater levels. If a well is pumped at a faster rate than the aquifer around it is recharged by precipitation or other underground flow, then water levels in the well can be lowered.

Why do we need a lot of ground water?

This is particularly true in areas with limited precipitation, limited surface water resources, or high demand from agriculture and growing populations. Some ecological systems, such as wetlands or surface waters fed by springs and seeps, also rely on ground water.