Last year, 2022, was the United Nations’ ‘Year of Groundwater’ (IGRAC 2021; Wikipedia 2022; (United Nations, 2022). In addition to the special recognition that groundwater received globally, 2022 was also the 30th anniversary of Hydrogeology Journal (HJ).

Traditionally, since Editors’ Choice began in 2010, five or six published articles from each publishing year have been selected as Editors’ Choice articles. However, for the 2021 list, there were ten articles selected and promoted in order to support the United Nations’ year of focus on groundwater. To again commemorate the Year of Groundwater, and also HJ’s birthday, the HJ editors decided to once more designate ten articles as Editors’ Choice for 2022.

Editors’ Choice articles are those that are considered to be exceptional by the editors: Martin Appold, Jean-Christophe Comte, Jean-Michel Lemieux, Rui Ma, Maria-Theresia Schafmeister and Clifford Voss. These have been selected from among the ∼150 articles that were published in the HJ issues of 2022.

The Editors’ Choice articles are generally distinguished by a variety of positive attributes including: outstanding science, innovative approach, potentially important interpretations or conclusions, important methodology, interesting field area or phenomenon, unusual topic, human/political/social/governance/historical/philosophical interest, challenging arguments, and more. The editors believe that HJ readers will find these articles to be especially interesting and valuable. These highlight the importance of groundwater in our world, how we humans interact with groundwater, and how we might preserve and manage groundwater resources in the future.

The 2022 HJ Editors’ Choice winning articles are listed in Table 1, in order of appearance within the year’s issues. In this selection, the foci of the Editors’ Choice articles can be considered as belonging to three extremely important areas of hydrogeology:

  1. 1.

    Measurement and forecasting techniques

  • Houben et al. consider the advantages and uses of horizontal wells.

  • King et al. evaluate coastal water supplies using geophysics.

  • Marchant et al. use mathematical modeling for drought analyses.

  • Çelik et al. evaluate karst aquifers using geochemical approaches.

  1. 2.

    Understanding phenomena

  • Xanke and Liesch evaluate large-scale groundwater storage using GRACE.

  • Lei et al. study overdraft impacts on subsidence, considering geologic properties.

  • Widodo et al. evaluate liquefaction phenomena that occurred above a confined aquifer during an earthquake.

  1. 3.

    Human nature and human infrastructure

  • Foster and Chilton expand understanding of the economics and valuation of groundwater.

  • La Vigna evaluates the fragility of city water supplies.

  • Rochford et al. consider the factors that affect the option of voluntary groundwater monitoring in rural areas.

Table 1 Hydrogeology Journal’s 2022 Editors’ Choice articles
Full size table

We invite you to download, read, and share all ten articles. These articles may well provide an excellent set of discussion topics for students in groundwater classes and for groundwater professionals at both formal and informal meetings and sessions. These also provide important guidance for future expansion of hydrogeologic knowledge and for practical and effective management of groundwater resources.

To make it easier for readers to access all of these articles, Springer Nature will grant the ones that are not already freely available online (open access) with free online access for a period of time in 2023 after this announcement. The Editors’ Choice articles are also highlighted on the International Association of Hydrogeologists’ website (IAH 2023), and via IAH and Springer Nature social media.

The congratulations from and appreciation of the hydrogeologic and water-resource community are due to all of these distinguished authors for producing such valuable and interesting articles!

(While announcing the list of distinguished 2022 articles, the editors and HJ staff also wish to thank those special people who make HJ article publication possible by volunteering a significant amount of their time and energy. The continued excellent support provided to HJ and its authors by the HJ associate editors, by the reviewers of HJ manuscripts, and by HJ’s abstract translation managers and their teams of helpers is vital to the success of this journal and is much appreciated.)