International Groundwater Resilience to Climate Change and High Pressure Conference

Groundwater has become over the past few decades a fundamental resource for social, economic and environmental sustainability. Human well-being, livelihoods, ecosystems, industries, agriculture and urban development are more and more reliant on groundwater. Groundwater development should therefore be carefully managed to make full benefit of its potential, to protect its quality and to guard against over-exploitation of the aquifers.

The sustainability of groundwater is on one hand linked to policy issues influencing water and land use, and represents one of the major global challenges in natural resource management. On the other hand groundwater is technically complex. Practical advances in this field are urgently needed, so that the technical expert and the water manager can reach a common understanding. There is also a need to integrate groundwater and surface water management to ensure better overall water management and allocation.

This Conference will focus on the resiliency of groundwater resources facing increasingly high pressure exerted by the socio-economic world and facing the climate variability and change. The themes of the congress include but are not limited to:

• Impact of growing pressures and threats (increasing demands, land use changes, drought, over-exploitation) on groundwater resources and related ecosystems.
• Groundwater and climate change. Resiliency and importance of groundwater in adapting to global change.
• Groundwater monitoring and modelling. Novel Approaches in characterizing spatial-temporal distribution of water resources.
• Protection and sustainable management of groundwater. Innovative approaches with special emphasis to managed aquifer recharge.
• Surface water and groundwater interaction. Towards Integrated water resources management.
• Preservation of water resources in coastal aquifers.
• GW exploration and assessment. Novel approaches using RS and GIS
• Understanding water governance. The role of groundwater.
• Groundwater facing agriculture demands.
• Case studies.

All papers accepted for presentation at the conference, either oral or poster, will be reviewed and published as proceedings. Some selected papers will be published in a special issue of the Journal WATER.

The conference is jointly organized by the University of Mugla (Turkey), the University of Poitiers (France) and the Higher National School of Hydraulics (Blida, Algeria).