Groundwater mapping paper reaches 50,000 downloads
Basis for sustainable development of African water resources
Groundwater map of Africa
A paper, Quantitative maps of groundwater resources in Africa, by Richard Taylor and colleagues from the British Geological Survey (BGS) has been downloaded more than 50,000 times since its publication online in the open-access journal, Environmental Research Letters, in April last year.
The paper, the most downloaded in the journal's history, reveals that the estimated volume of groundwater resources in Africa is more than 20 times greater than water resources at the surface defined by mean annual river discharge. Consequently, groundwater in Africa can, in many places, provide a climate-resilient supply of water.
Under the new UPGro (Unlocking the Potential of Groundwater in sub-Saharan Africa) programme, funded by DFID and NERC, Richard, together with the BGS and colleagues in Africa, plan to conduct higher-resolution mapping of groundwater resources at sub-national levels to inform the sustainable development and management of groundwater in Africa.
- Environmental Research Letters manuscript: http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/7/2/024009/article
- Richard speaking to Al-Jazeera last April about the paper: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-fOi0iBUL8
- Groundwater Resilience to Climate Change in Africa project: http://www.bgs.ac.uk/GWResilience/
