Groundwater Vulnerability Assessment and Sustainable Aquifer Management

This book examines groundwater vulnerability through the interconnected lenses of sustainability and resilience, offering a comprehensive account of emerging approaches to groundwater assessment, protection, management, and long-term aquifer sustainability. It explores the scientific principles, modelling frameworks, geospatial techniques, and decision-support tools that underpin vulnerability analysis while addressing the increasing pressures associated with urbanization, industrialization, agricultural expansion, salinization, over-abstraction, and climate change. The volume highlights how traditional, modern, and advanced data-driven techniques can be integrated to design adaptive strategies for sustainable aquifer management.

Organized into five parts and 17 chapters, the book begins with an introductory chapter that frames groundwater vulnerability assessment and sustainable aquifer management as interconnected scientific, environmental, and policy challenges. The second part presents methodological foundations and review-based perspectives, covering index-based, overlay, process-based, simulation, geospatial, and integrated assessment approaches. The third part provides regional applications and case studies from diverse hydrogeological settings, including Egypt, Algeria, India, and Serbia, addressing agricultural pressure, urbanization, industrialization, coastal salinization, tidal effects, and groundwater-resource planning.

The fourth part focuses on climate change, governance, mitigation, and sustainable management frameworks. It examines bioremediation, risk management, real-time monitoring, managed aquifer recharge, institutional challenges, and adaptive responses to aquifer degradation, including groundwater vulnerability in a rapidly growing Asian megacity. The fifth part presents advanced technologies, geospatial techniques, and artificial-intelligence applications, demonstrating how machine learning, remote sensing, pore-throat analysis, MICMAC modelling, explainable AI, and hybrid data-driven approaches are transforming groundwater vulnerability assessment.

Featuring research and applications from groundwater-stressed regions across Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Mediterranean-MENA region, the chapters integrate field-based evidence, modelling advances, policy perspectives, and emerging technologies to bridge scientific understanding with practical solutions for groundwater protection and management. This volume is an essential resource for hydrogeologists, environmental scientists, water-resource engineers, researchers, postgraduate students, groundwater managers, and policymakers seeking resilient and data-driven approaches to groundwater sustainability in a changing climate.