Concepts on groundwater resources

When dealing with groundwater and water resources in general, various conceptual terms are used by different individuals, experts and organizations. They are often applied without a clear-cut definition. This produces poor precision in the language used, misinterpretations and uncertain evaluations that make results difficult to compare. Proposing a terminology is not a simple task if it has to agree with both the hydrogeological processes and the related environmental issues involved. However, this is a task that has to be done. Lack of precise definition of terms can be found in the Water Plans carried out by the different Water Districts in Spain, as well as in the legal norms. This also happens in Ibero-America, although in some cases glossaries are included in the administration and legal texts. This paper presents a synthetic proposal, following the sequence of hydrological-hydrogeological processes, highlighting some of the commonly used terms. Some of them may coexist, but the others should be discarded. Some of the terms to be considered when referring to groundwater are: use, demand, consumption, recharge, resource, exploitation, intensive exploitation, water mining, and recovery time. The English terms are given, and their Spanish and Catalan trnaslation.