Sustainable Ways to Manage Soil and Groundwater Resources

Water as a renewable resource is presumed to be the prime concern and focal point of attention in forthcoming years and groundwater will remain an important component of it.   Nonetheless, the management of groundwater is very costly and a herculean task for water resource managers even after interventions of the state-of-the-art technology. In most of the cases, the knowledge gaps and thus effort gaps may increase the groundwater management cost. This chapter aims to present the basic and advance knowledge about soil and groundwater systems, sources of contaminants, its fate and transport under varying subsurface conditions. Given that, contaminants can exist in a soil matrix as free-colloidal dissolved or gas phase affecting soil-groundwater quality. Therefore, this chapter also provide valuable information about expertise approach for the contaminated landscape, which highlights local and climatic solutions. In addition, it also talks about the field-scale hydrological practices to improve groundwater quality and bring back it’s pristinely at a low cost. This chapter will provide in-depth analysis of the cost related to the remediation and management of soil-groundwater systems. This chapter will help the resource managers, policy makers, and hydrogeologists to frame designs, methods, policies, and actions plans to use very low-cost natural climatic solutions.