Last week, while dining on seafood here in the prairies I had the opportunity to chat with a hydrogeologist from Pakistan named Rashid. Being surrounded by proudly-racist but hardworking farm boys with nice vehicles, and lulled by the long winds that flow across tall grasses only to hit up against the concrete skyscrapers and animal byproduct warehouses of the urban centre we have come to inhabit -- sometimes I feel like I'm missing out on something. It's as if I can't quite tap into the full range of ideas and innovations that are so ripe and plentiful when you get a wider variety of people at the table. And Rashid was a breath of fresh air.
Now Rashid's seen waves of sand spin across the Arabian desert, and had a peice of the petroleum extraction pie for himself to taste -- learning about how static and dynamic natural processes affect what humans want to do ("I mean, you can't just take a pipeline meant for the water and cover it with mountains of sand. It's not going to work."). I figure, hey, if a multibillion dollar mining corporation will headhunt a guy to fly him around the country, I can probably trust what he says. Or at least what he knows. I mean, hell, he's in Europe right now at a geologist's conference.
And so I read about groundwater. I read from the book that mining engineers will highlight line by line as they try figure out how best to interact with the way the world works around them. Because they've figured out that we can't just dictate. To get the most out of the natural environment you have to come to terms with its flow.
Water and Mining: Groundwater
From Groundwater by R. Allan Freeze and John A. Cherry...
"This may well be the only book that either of us will ever write...We recognize and appreciate the lifelong influences of our parents, our wives, our families, our teachers, and our students. This book is dedicated to all of them./This book is also dedicated to the taxpayers of Canada and the United States, few of whom will ever read it, but all of whom have contributed to its birth"
The endless circulation of water between ocean, atmosphere, and land is called the hydrologic cycle. The land-based portion is called groundwater.
To study groundwater is to understand the geological environments that control the occurrence of groundwater, to look at the physical laws that describe the flow of groundwater, about the chemical evolution that accompanies that flow, and how we fit into the cycle.
The old school emphasized the importance of groundwater solely as a resource, just a decade ago. They focused on the development of water supplies through wells and the calculation of aquifer yields. The only thing they considered "problems" were any threats to the extraction of water resources.
"But groundwater is more than a resource. It is an important feature of the natural environment; it leads to environmental problems, and may in some cases offer a medium for environmental solutions. It is part of the hydrologic cycle, and an understanding of its role in this cycle is mandatory if integrated analyses are to be promoted in the consideration of watershed resources, and in the regional assessment of environmental contamination."
Translation: to understand the water under our feet is to understand the movement of waves on the ocean, to understand that perfect breaking wave at Mavericks or La Jolla. And miners are starting to realize it.
And rich oilmen take note, the same forces that surfers take so deeply to heart -- swell generating earthquakes, varying landforms, and underground streams that hold up the back end of things (all elements involved with the hydrologic cycle) -- watching all these little details enfold over time is also like viewing the migration and accumulation of petroleum. You have to credit way we play in waves with allowing you to buy that big 10 gallon hat. That Harley you were given for the great job you did patching up the rig real quick, and turned down because you already had 6 -- thank the lonely idiot out in Tofino or the native Hawaiian on the North Shore in big swell season.
And here is a Navajo woman's reaction to the manipulation of groundwater in her homeland:
"I want to see them stop taking water from inside the mesa. The water underground works with the water that falls to the surface of Mother Earth, will wash away....I want to see the burial grounds left alone. All of my relatives graves are being disturbed. I want to see the mining stopped."
To get the way water moves through sand and rock and space and time why not start by looking at Darcy's Law.
Because all this liquid stuff that we swim in or drink from the ground or use to help us get at the uranium or petroleum -- you probably don't know the half of it --
"Water is formed by the union of two hydrogen atoms with one oxygen atom. The oxygen atom is bonded to the hydrogen atoms unsymmetrically, with a bond angle of 105 degrees. This unsymmetrical arrangement gives rise to an unbalanced electrical charge that imparts a polar characteristic to the molecule....Water is unusual in that the density of the solid phase, ice, is substantially lower than the density of the liquid phase, water. In the liquid phase the maximum density is achieved at 4 degrees Celsius....The formula H2O is a gross simplification from the structural viewpoint and is also a simplification from the atomic viewpoint. Natural water can be a mixture of" six nuclides. "Eighteen combinations of H-O-H are possible using these nuclides."
-Flow Nets by Analog Simulation
Mapping it out: "The analogy between electrical flow and groundwater flow is the basis for two types of analog model that have proven useful for the generation of quantitative flow nets.
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-Read a bottled water consumption blog called Liquid Asset here.
-Find out about the affects of groundwater on coastal areas and ecosystems here. The page is produced by the U.S. Geological Survey.
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So ya, I had fun reading about groundwater on a heated afternoon on my day off from both jobs anyways.... You'd be surprised what you'll find out about what you thought you knew if you only start flipping pages.
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