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Rethinking groundwater age

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It is commonly thought that old groundwater cannot be pumped sustainably, and that recently recharged groundwater is inherently sustainable. We argue that both old and young groundwaters can be used in physically sustainable or unsustainable ways.

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Fig. 1: Flow of water and distribution of ages in a groundwater system in an arid region.

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Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Global Water Futures grant to G.F. and J.C.M. and an NSERC Discovery Grant to G.F. J.C.M acknowledges funding received as a Fellow of the CIFAR Earth4D Subsurface Science and Exploration Program. M.O.C. acknowledges support under an Independent Research Fellowship from the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC; NE/P017819/1). This commentary benefitted from discussions with P. Döll, J. Famiglietti, G. Fogg, X. Huggins, A. Manning, K. Markovich and M. Rohde.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil, Geological and Environmental Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Grant Ferguson & Jennifer C. McIntosh

  2. School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Grant Ferguson

  3. Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Grant Ferguson & Jennifer C. McIntosh

  4. School of Earth and Ocean Sciences & Water Research Institute, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK

    Mark O. Cuthbert

  5. Connected Waters Initiative Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

    Mark O. Cuthbert

  6. Department of Geosciences, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA

    Kevin Befus

  7. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Tom Gleeson

  8. School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Tom Gleeson

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  1. Grant Ferguson
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  2. Mark O. Cuthbert
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  3. Kevin Befus
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  4. Tom Gleeson
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  5. Jennifer C. McIntosh
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Correspondence to Grant Ferguson.

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Ferguson, G., Cuthbert, M.O., Befus, K. et al. Rethinking groundwater age. Nat. Geosci. 13, 592–594 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0629-7

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