Human Development Does Not Change,

¶ … human development does not change, will groundwater sustainability be affected?

To examine the current status of ground water protection schemes and the available information of the threat to ground water with the current human activity and the future possibilities.

The ground water is unique because it is different from the surface water that is found in river catchments and rain-based water systems. Ground water is well under ground, sometimes even 300- 700 feet underground well protected by the mass of the earth. It is also being replenished by the seeping of water into the crust from above. However humankind has by using drills broken the canopy of the ground water and has started exploiting the ground water ever since the sixties. There are therefore 2 issues, one -- the depletion of the water source, and second the pollution of the ground water by human activity. The hypothesis is that constant exploitation of the ground water and the contamination by human activities will deplete the resource in the near future. (Alley; Reilly; Franke, n. d.)

The principal reason is that today globally the use of groundwater has increased manifold in the past 50 years; and though water gets added to the ground water system by recharge from precipitation, and water is constantly leaving the system as discharge to surface water and as evapotranspiration. Added to that, human activities affect the amount and rate of movement of water in the system, entering the system, and leaving the system. (Alley; Reilly; Franke, n. d.) There may be also other effects of constantly removing water stored in the system, and therefore fundamentally it can be assumed that underground water has become a fragile resource especially because of human activity. There is therefore a basic ground for developing a hypothesis on these lines:

The hypothesis or predicted outcome

The hypothesis is that constant exploitation of the ground water and the contamination by human activities will deplete the resource in the near future. It is a subject matter that has been considerably researched and therefore literature exists for the effects of human activity on the ground water. The examination of this literature will point out the veracity of the hypothesis and also indicate the future course of research methodology.

Literature review for research

Some of the researches viewed as samples itself provide ample evidence of the effects of human activity on ground water. The principal activity that contaminates the ground water is agriculture. For example a research in the rice fields of Philippines showed that Nitrate contaminates the groundwater used for domestic purposes by the rural poor in developing nations on account of the residues of pesticides used in agriculture. In Asia, many of the rural poor live in rice-producing areas where the continuous flooding of rice (Oryza sativa) fields may lead to high leaching rates of groundwater contaminants. This study presents results of in a study the measurements of nitrate and pesticide concentrations in shallow groundwater in 54 domestic wells at Philippines showed that the agro-ecological activities after 1960 has led to the contamination of ground water. (Bouman; Castaneda; Bhuiyan, 2002)

Likewise another research by Berg, Tran et al. (2001) has shown that there is arsenic contamination of the Red River alluvial tract in the city of Hanoi and this happens owing to the nature of the subsoil that contains iron. There was observed about average concentration of 430 ?g/L. Analysis of raw groundwater pumped from the lower aquifer for the 'Hanoi water supply yielded arsenic levels of 240-320 ?g/L in three of eight treatment plants and 37-82 ?g/L in another five plants.' (Berg; Tran, et al., 2001)