Groundwater for Sustainable Development

Groundwater for Sustainable Development is an international, interdisciplinary journal dedicated to advancing the science, management, governance, and protection of groundwater resources in support of sustainable, resilient societies and ecosystems.

Groundwater is fundamental to water, energy and food security, human health, economic development, ecosystem functioning, and adaptation to climate variability and change. At the same time, groundwater systems worldwide face increasing pressures from overexploitation, contamination, land-use change, urbanization, climate change, seawater intrusion, and competing demands. Addressing these challenges requires approaches that connect hydrogeological understanding with environmental, technological, socioeconomic, institutional, and policy dimensions.

The journal provides a global platform for high-quality research that improves understanding of groundwater systems and translates scientific knowledge into effective solutions for their sustainable use, protection, restoration, and governance. It places particular emphasis on studies that clearly demonstrate relevance to groundwater sustainability, provide methodological or conceptual advances, and generate insights transferable beyond a single study area.

The journal welcomes research on:

Groundwater resources and aquifer systems: occurrence, recharge, storage, flow, discharge, groundwater–surface water interactions, aquifer characterization, water balances, and resource assessment.

Groundwater quality and hydrogeochemistry: natural and anthropogenic controls on groundwater chemistry, geogenic contaminants, salinization, seawater intrusion, nutrients, trace elements, emerging contaminants, pathogens, and processes affecting groundwater quality.

Groundwater contamination and remediation: contaminant sources, transport and fate, vulnerability and risk assessment, remediation technologies, natural attenuation, and prevention and management strategies.

Groundwater sustainability and resource management: sustainable abstraction, groundwater depletion and recovery, water-use efficiency, conjunctive use, demand management, groundwater allocation, and strategies for balancing human and environmental water needs.

Climate change, drought, and groundwater resilience: impacts of climate variability and change on recharge, storage, quality, availability, and groundwater-dependent systems; groundwater drought; extreme events; and the role of aquifer management, and policy response in climate adaptation and water-security strategies.

Managed aquifer recharge and groundwater replenishment: MAR, aquifer storage and recovery, water banking, nature-based recharge solutions, recharge enhancement, water reuse, and assessment of their technical, environmental, economic, and societal performance.

Groundwater-dependent ecosystems and environmental flows: interactions among groundwater, rivers, wetlands, springs, terrestrial ecosystems, biodiversity, and ecosystem services, including approaches for their protection and restoration.

Groundwater, agriculture, cities, industry, and energy: groundwater within food–water–energy–ecosystem systems, irrigation and agricultural productivity, urban groundwater, industrial water use, subsurface energy systems, geothermal energy, hot and cold water relation, and competing sectoral demands.

Groundwater governance, policy, economics, and society: institutions, regulation, groundwater rights and allocation, economic instruments, social-ecological systems, community-based management, equity, environmental justice, stakeholder participation, transboundary aquifers, and the political economy of groundwater.

Groundwater and human health: exposure to groundwater contaminants, drinking-water security, health-risk assessment, and interdisciplinary approaches connecting groundwater quality with public health.

Monitoring, modeling, and emerging technologies: field and sensor-based monitoring, numerical and conceptual modeling, remote sensing, geophysics, environmental tracers and isotopes, artificial intelligence and machine learning, data assimilation, digital tools, decision-support systems, and other innovative methods that provide demonstrable advances in groundwater understanding or management.

Solutions, interventions, and implementation: evaluation of groundwater-management measures, adaptation strategies, successful and unsuccessful interventions, implementation barriers, trade-offs, scalability, and evidence-based pathways toward sustainable groundwater systems.

Article expectations:

The journal particularly encourages studies that move beyond site description to provide new scientific understanding, methodological innovation, management relevance, or transferable lessons. Case studies are welcome when they address a clearly defined scientific or sustainability question and demonstrate relevance beyond the specific study area.

Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research connecting groundwater science with engineering, ecology, climate science, public health, economics, governance, and the social sciences is strongly encouraged.

Studies based primarily on routine groundwater-quality characterization, standard water-quality indices, conventional GIS overlay methods, or the application of established models or machine-learning algorithms without clear methodological innovation, process understanding, validation, or broader sustainability significance are generally outside the journal's priority scope. Also, the development of new water treatment materials or processes with limited relevance to groundwater is beyond scope.

Groundwater for Sustainable Development seeks to connect science, policy, and solutions, supporting evidence-based pathways toward groundwater systems that are environmentally sustainable, socially equitable, economically viable, and resilient to future change.