GROUNDWATER STORAGE AND

FLOW OF WATER
 GROUNDWATER

• It is a water located beneath the earth's surface in soil

pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations.
• the upper layer of the soil is the unsaturated zone, where
water is present in varying amounts that change over
time, but does not saturate the soil.
• below this layer is the saturated zone, where all of the
pores, cracks, and spaces between rock particles are
saturated with water.
• the top of the surface where groundwater occurs is called
the water table.
How groundwater occurs

• most of the water in the ground

comes from precipitation that
infiltrates downward from the land
surface.
• Groundwater supplies are
replenished, or recharged, by the
rain that seeps down into the cracks
and crevices beneath the land's
surface.
As these charts show, even though the
amount of water locked up in groundwater
is a small percentage of all Earth's water, it
represents a large percentage of total fresh
water on Earth. the pie chart shows that
about 1.7 percent of all of Earth's water is
groundwater and about 30.1 percent of
freshwater on Earth occurs as
groundwater.
- Groundwater is stored in, and moves
slowly through, moderately to highly
permeable rocks called aquifers.

- Groundwater occurs in aquifers

under two conditions, unconfined and
confined. The unconfined aquifer is
where water only partly fills an aquifer,
the upper surface of the saturated
zone is free to rise and decline. While,
the confined aquifer is where water
completely fills an aquifer that is
overlain by confining bed.
• Water in aquifers is brought to the
surface naturally through a spring or
can be discharged into lakes and
streams
• Under natural condition, ground water
moves down until, in the course of its
movement, it reaches the land surface
at a spring or through a seep along the
side or bottom of a stream channel.
• Groundwater can also be extracted
through a well drilled into the aquifer.
• Gravity is the dominant driving force in
groundwater movement
• Subsurface runoff is the water that infiltrates in the vadose
zone (unsaturated zone), from rain, snowmelt, or other
sources, and moves laterally towards the streams.
Vadose zone extends from the top of the ground surface
to the water table. It is one of the major components in the
water cycle. Subsurface runoff can be expressed in water
volume (or mass) per unit of area per unit of time.
• In the saturated zone, all
interconnected openings are full of
water. Movement in saturated zone
may be either laminar or turbulent.
In laminar flow, water particles
move in an orderly manner along
streamlines. In turbulent flow, water
particles move in a disordered,
highly irregular manner, which
result in a complex mixing of the
particles.
Groundwater contributes to surface water