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International audience ; Sustainable groundwater management relies on data to establish resource conditions and measure the effects of management intervention. As groundwater management grows in size and complexity so does the data needed to inform it, and the systems needed to manage this data. This chapter presents a discussion of groundwater information systems, their history, and examples of their application in France and Australia, including how these systems are used to inform and improve groundwater management. Examples are presented demonstrating the application of information systems in a range of agencies and legislative settings. These examples include systems used for local management, national data standardization, online data sharing, and environmental impact assessments. Finally, lessons learned and future developments are presented. This includes a comparison of the similarities and differences in the history and current state of groundwater management system development in each country.

International audience ; Sustainable groundwater management relies on data to establish resource conditions and measure the effects of management intervention. As groundwater management grows in size and complexity so does the data needed to inform it, and the systems needed to manage this data. This chapter presents a discussion of groundwater information systems, their history, and examples of their application in France and Australia, including how these systems are used to inform and improve groundwater management. Examples are presented demonstrating the application of information systems in a range of agencies and legislative settings. These examples include systems used for local management, national data standardization, online data sharing, and environmental impact assessments. Finally, lessons learned and future developments are presented. This includes a comparison of the similarities and differences in the history and current state of groundwater management system development in each country.

This study develops regionally optimal ground-water extraction strategies. Alternative explicit planning objectives arc: (1) Maximize total pumping from the underlying aquifer while causing the evolution of a steady potentiometric: surface: and (2) maintain a prespecified target potentiometric surface. Implicit objectives involve controlling stream/aquifer interflow and water flow across a state boundary, and attempting to avoid poss disruption of current cropping patterns. Models, bounds, constraints, and data arc: formulated. Alternative optimal strategies and the rationale for preferring one strategy arc: presented for a region in Arkansas. The objective of maintaining the relatively unstressed target potentiometric: surl1ce yields politically and socially unacceptable water-use strategies. The most acceptable strategy maximizes sustainable ground-water extraction, maintains recent ground-water flow to Louisiana, maintains current potentiometric surface heads It the Louisiana-Arkansas border, maintains more than minimally acceptable surface water now to Louisiana, and approximately maintains current cropping distributions. Developed planning models utilize the embedding approach, over 300 pumping variables, and 700 total variables, indicating the. utility of the embed· ding method for regional sustained yield (steady-state) planning.

Groundwater serves as a source of freshwater for agricultural, industrial and domestic purposes and it accounts for about 42%, 27% and 36% respectively. As it remains the only source of all-year-round supply of freshwater globally, it is of vital importance as regards water security, human survival and sustainable agriculture. The main goal of this study is to identify the main cause-effect relationship between human activities and the state of groundwater quality using a communication tool (the DPSIR Model; Drivers, Pressures, State, Impact and Response). A total of twenty-one samples were collected from ten peri-urban communities scattered across three conterminous Local Government Areas in Southwestern Nigeria. Each of the groundwater samples was tested for twelve parameters - total dissolved solids, pH, bicarbonate, chloride, lead, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen, nitrate, sulphate, magnesium and total suspended solids. The study revealed that the concentrations of DO and Pb were above threshold limits, while pH and N were just below the threshold and others elements were within acceptable limits based on Guidelines for Drinking Water Quality and Nigeria Standard for Drinking Water Quality. The study revealed that groundwater quality levels from the sampled wells are under pressure leading to reduction in the amount of freshwater availability. This is a first-order setback in achieving access to freshwater as a sustainable development goal across Less Developed Communities (LDCs) globally. To combat this threat, there is the need for an integrated approach in response towards groundwater conservation and sustainability by all stakeholders.

Groundwater irrigation, which was developed in the 1960s to
increase vertical drainage to prevent waterlogging and salinisation in
canal commands, has now become a major component of the overall
irrigation sector in Pakistan. An estimated 37 percent of total
irrigation supplies at the farm gate comes from groundwater [NESPAK
(1991)]. Along with the shift in purpose for groundwater development
from providing drainage to providing irrigation supplies, has come a
shift from public to private tubewells as the primary source of
groundwater in Pakistan. The increase in private tubewells has not only
increased the total availability of water for crop production, but also
provided farmers with greater control over irrigation supplies. Because
groundwater from private tubewells is generally not tied to the rigid
warabandi schedule of canal deliveries, water applications can be more
closely matched to crop requirements. The result is higher yields and
higher economic returns to irrigated agriculture [Meinzen-Di

In many areas of the world, groundwater resources are increasingly stressed, and unsustainable use has become common. Where existing mechanisms for governing groundwater are ineffective or nonexistent, new ones need to be developed. Local level groundwater governance provides an intriguing alternative to top-down models, with the promise of enabling management to better match the diversity of physical and social conditions in groundwater basins. One such example is emerging in California, USA, where new state law requires new local agencies to self-organize and act to achieve sustainable groundwater management. In this article, we draw on insights from research on common pool resource management and natural resources governance to develop guidelines for institutional design for local groundwater governance, grounded in California's developing experience. We offer nine criteria that can be used as principles or standards in the evaluation of institutional design for local level groundwater governance: scale, human capacity, funding, authority, independence, representation, participation, accountability, and transparency. We assert that local governance holds promise as an alternative to centralized governance in some settings but that its success will depend heavily on the details of its implementation. Further, for local implementation to achieve its promise, there remain important complementary roles for centralized governance. California's developing experience with local level groundwater management in dozens of basins across the state provides a unique opportunity to test and assess the importance and influence of these criteria.