Aquifers are underground formations that are sufficiently permeable or porous to yield groundwater in usable quantities. Aquifers can be viewed as underground lakes or reservoirs. Groundwater exists in aquifers in the spaces between soil particles, in rock fractures, and in other channels and openings. The water-saturated voids together contain water that can be extracted using wells. Indeed, aquifers form a vital water resource that contains about 95 per cent of the world's fresh-water (Lvovitch, 1970). An increasing amount of water used in irrigation, industrial, agriculture and public supplies is groundwater that is extracted from aquifers via wells and pumps. In the United States, groundwater supplies 97 per cent of homes in rural areas, and about 34 per cent of homes in urban areas (US Geological Survey, 1980).
Unconfined and confined aquifers
There are two basic types of aquifers, unconfined and confined. Both result from the deposition and layering of various soils and rock...
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© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers
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Batterman, S. (1999). Aquifer . In: Environmental Geology. Encyclopedia of Earth Science. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4494-1_19
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