Challenges of Groundwater as Resources in the Near Future

Abstract

Groundwater has been a very precious resource for human life and economic development in the world. With increasing population and food demand, the groundwater use especially for agriculture is largely elevated worldwide. The very much large groundwater use results in depletion of major aquifers, land subsidences in many large cities, anthropogenic groundwater contamination, seawater intrusion in coastal areas and accompanying severe conflicts for water security. Furthermore, with the advent of changing climate, securing freshwater supply including groundwater becomes a pressing and critical issue for sustainable societal development in every country because prediction of precipitation is more difficult, its uneven distribution is aggravating, weather extremes are more frequent, and rising sea level is also threatening the freshwater resource. Under these difficulties, can groundwater be sustaining its role as essential element for human and society in the near future? We have to focus our efforts and wisdom on answering the question. Korean government should increase its investment in securing groundwater resources for changing climate.

Current Status of Groundwater Monitoring Networks in Korea

“…Under the Groundwater Act, the MOLIT and K-water have installed groundwater monitoring stations since 1995 [10,17,25]. A total of 386 stations were installed as of 2015 (Figure 3a) and an extra 133 stations will be installed by the end of 2016.…”

“…Among 386 stations, 166 stations are implemented with two types of wells, and the other stations have only a single deep well (see Table 2). The mean well depths are 20 and 70 m for shallow and deep groundwater wells, respectively [10,27].…”

“…The K-water provides real-time groundwater data to the public on a website (www.gims.go.kr; Figure 3d). If any issues arise including sensor malfunction and telecommunication errors at a station, a maintenance team is immediately dispatched to resolve them [10]. The monitoring data are also published in the annual monitoring report book.…”

“…The SGMN (or LGMN) fills the gaps in the current monitoring wells of the NGMN, which is sparsely distributed over the country [10,26,42]. According to Article 17 of the Groundwater Act, local governments (cities and counties) are required to establish auxiliary groundwater monitoring wells by using existing wells or installing new wells to check the groundwater level changes (water temperature and EC monitoring is optional, depending on the local governments), and to report the results to the MOLIT [43].…”

“…In Korea, groundwater accounts for only 11% of the total annual water consumption, but the use of groundwater is intensively elevated during dry seasons [9]. Among the total annual financial investment on water resources, only 0.5% is allocated for groundwater resource and is spent mostly on additional groundwater development in dry seasons [10]. Recent multiple prolonged droughts have drawn much greater attention to the availability of groundwater, and numerous groundwater wells have been exploited in an effort to secure more water resources.…”