It’s Water-Wise Wednesdays with Frannie the Fish! {Awesome Aquifer Kit: Pumping the Supply}

This week in Frannie’s exploration of the Awesome AquiferKit is all about how we can pump water from the ground.

We can use groundwater to grow food, water farm animals, drink, and even take baths and wash dishes in.  In order to get to this groundwater, we have to pump it up through wells that are drilled deep into the saturated zone.  This syringe attached to the plastic tube serves as our pump and the nylon fabric at the end is our screen that prevents sediments from getting into the well. 

You will need: Water, a syringe, a plastic tube, some nylon, a rubber band
a clear container to pump water into, and your clear contain filled with gravel

Well siting is the process of finding a location to place the well.  We can’t drill a well into a lake, so we’ll drill our well on the top of our hill and make sure the bottom of the well is far below the water table.

When we pump the water out, the level of the water in our aquifer goes down. We are withdrawing, or taking away groundwater from the whole area.  We can see that, as the water table goes down, our lake shrinks.   Remember, our lake is under the direct influence of groundwater.

The more water we pump out, the shallower Frannie's pond is!

The amount of water pumped out that matches the amount of water that can naturally recharge the aquifer is called safe yield.  If we keep withdrawing water but we don’t allow the aquifer time to recharge, then we are depleting the groundwater source.