About this ebook
Groundwater is water located beneath the ground surface in soil pore spaces and in the fractures of lithologic formations. This theme presents a perspective of the field of groundwater and an overview of the important aspects of the subject such as, natural origin and distribution, characteristics under diverse climates and surrounding rocky environments, exploration and management, natural quality and human related sources of contamination, sustainable exploitation of resources, protection and current research trends. The content of the theme on Groundwater is organized with state-of-the-art presentations covering several topics: Origin, Distribution, Formation, and Effects; Typical Hydrogeological Scenarios; Transport Processes in Groundwater; Transport Phenomena and Vulnerability of the Unsaturated Zone; Groundwater Development; Groundwater Use and Protection; Groundwater Management: An Overview of Hydro-geology, Economic Values and Principles of Management; Special Issues in Groundwater, which are then expanded into multiple subtopics, each as a chapter.
These three volumes are aimed at the following five major target audiences: University and College students Educators, Professional practitioners, Research personnel and Policy analysts, Managers, and Decision makers and NGOs
About the author
Luis Silveira was born in Montevideo, Uruguay in April 1949. He started to study engineering in his native country, but in early 1974 he fled from the military regime and arrived in Sweden, where he obtained the status of political refugee. After learning Swedish, he resumed his studies. He became a Swedish citizen in 1978. The following year, he obtained a M.Sc. degree in Hydraulics and Environmental Engineering, at the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden. After his graduation, he worked on groundwater in a Swedish consulting and constructing firm. In 1980, he took a six-month international postgraduate course in Barcelona, Spain, for deepening his knowledge of groundwater hydrology. Back in Stockholm, he continued working on groundwater projects in Scandinavia as well as at an international level.
With the return of democracy, he moved back to Uruguay in 1988. There he joined the Hydrology Group at the IMFIA (Department of Fluid Mechanics and Environmental Engineering), Faculty of Engineering, and University of the Uruguay Republic. Since then he has lectured in Surface Hydrology and Groundwater Hydrology and worked with several applied research projects concerning both surface hydrology and groundwater. During this activity he established a cooperation programme with the Royal Institute of Technology to strengthen the human resources from IMFIA. Then, he continued his postgraduate studies and finally in 1998 he defended his Ph.D. thesis on “Hydrological Modelling of Natural Grasslands with Small Slopes in Temperate Zones”, at the Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden. Today, he is Titular Professor and head of the Hydrology Group. His main academic and professional interests are chemical-biological techniques for “in situ” groundwater treatment, hydrological modelling of both
surface water and groundwater, hydrology of flatlands, forest and urban hydrology, hydrological applications of multivariate analysis and integrated water resources management.
He likes to listen to classical music, jazz and instrumental tango music while he performs his research work. In his free time he likes to read fiction books, watches movies (especially European ones), and enjoys life with his child Sebastian and his wife Patricia.
