2025 Sustainable Groundwater: Old and New
The Ineson 2025 meeting organised by the IAH GB Chapter with the Geological Society Hydrogeological Group was held on 19th November 2025 at Burlington House in London on the subject of “Sustainable Groundwater: Old and New”. Over 150 people attended, hearing 6 presentations including the Ineson Lecture by Dr. Bridget Scanlon (The University of Texas at Austin) and the 2025 Darcy Lecture by Dr. Grant Ferguson (University of Saskatchewan), as well as 15 posters and a panel debate.
Dr Grant Ferguson of the University of Saskatchewan opened the day with the 2025 Darcy Lecture “Living Fossils: Ancient Groundwater in the Anthropocene”. Taking a global perspective and using evidence from tracer studies, he re-examined existing definitions of renewable groundwater and proposed that dynamic complexity of both storage and flux variations need to be considered in the context of how water is used, to allow ancient groundwater in large aquifers to be managed more effectively and sustainably.
Four talks were given on the theme of sustainable management of groundwater in the UK, covering questions from use of drought indices to large scale policy decisions on abstraction management. Rob Soley (WSP) argued, using the Wessex Basin as a case study, that the broad Environmental Destination groundwater abstraction reduction targets currently set by regulators are over-conservative, as they do not consider crucial spatial and temporal variations, for example issues related to drought-resilient sources in headwaters. Alastair Black (Groundwater Science) reviewed the basis for river low-flow and wetland metrics and approaches to sustainability decisions using regional groundwater models, adding support to the idea that further abstraction reductions may not be necessary. Bentje Brauns (British Geological Survey) also looked at commonly used metrics such as the Standardised Groundwater Index (SGI), with cluster analysis of a large dataset of groundwater hydrographs revealing large-scale patterns in groundwater droughts but also highlighting the importance of site-specific behaviour. Mark Grout (Environment Agency) focussed on the Chalk aquifers of East Anglia to show how groundwater augmentation can be used to buffer spatial variations in demand and to mitigate dry weather low stream flows, considering the implications and challenges of Environmental Destination targets particularly in view of potential climate change scenarios.
The Ineson Lecture 2025 was given by Dr Bridget Scanlon of the University of Texas, “Conjunctive Management of Surface Water and Groundwater to Increase the Sustainability of Global Water Resources“. Examples using GRACE satellite data at a global scale showed that water storage variations are mainly caused by human drivers such as abstractions and irrigation return flows, and that satellite data are a useful tool for informing the public and policy development. The need for, and complexity of, combined use of surface water and groundwater for water resource management was highlighted and discussed.
During the day, the IAH John Day Bursary Award for best MSc dissertation on a hydrogeological topic was awarded to Hasan Kadodia (University of Birmingham), with the runner-up award to Mateusz Pandzierski (University of Birmingham). The Geological Society Hydrogeology Group also awarded the Whitaker and the Younger Medals for 2025.
The day concluded with a panel and audience discussion on the topics raised by the speakers. Overall messages from the day were that: broad scale assessments and targets may not take account of spatial and temporal nuances in groundwater (and surface water) management; more use of groundwater resources both globally and in the UK can be made in a sustainable way, with careful management by hydrogeologists; and ‘Groundwater is Great’!
All of the speakers have kindly agreed to make their presentations available on the IAH website, so please look at these for further details of the talks.
