The 30th of June, french CLEPSYDRA partners, AQUA-VALLEY and IRD, have participated to the Agropol’Eat Festival. Agropol’Eat Festival is an event dedicated to civil society which welcome every year around 2000 visitors.
The Agropol’Eat project was born in 2017 to raise public awareness of the challenges of the agroecological and environmental transition, by encouraging consultation between stakeholders, the link with the territory and its inhabitants and science-society debates, through the emergence of innovative events and projects.
As a very well establish event, IRD and Aqua-Valley have chosen Agropol’Eat to organize their Groundwater Open day and get involved in the 2024 edition to propose to visitors a travel into groundwater.
To highlight the groundwater topic, we have organized a stand to explain when and how groundwater is formed and recharged, what are the interactions with our anthropogenic uses and how we manage to monitor the groundwater to obtain useful information for our societies. The educational stand was organized around 4 workshops:
- Groundwater is not underground rivers
- Recharging groundwater where, when, how?
- Groundwater is impacted by anthropogenic uses
- Monitoring is important to better understand and manage this resource
Groundwater is not underground rivers
To explain this concept, we first asked people to explain their vision of groundwaters. Then we explained to them the difference between permeability and porosity by using bottles with different contents and to show them also how a pumice reacts to water. With these experiences, people understood that the water is contained in the soil and that it’s not like an underground river.
Recharging groundwater where, when, how?
To make the groundwater circulation be visible, the BRGM (French geological survey) which are an associated partner of CLEPSYDRA, lent us a pedagogic maquette that show a cup of the ground. For educational purposes, this maquette allows us to understand the circulation of water in geological formations and to illustrate the impact of pollution of anthropogenic origin, for example.
The model consists of 2 aquifers separated by a low-permeability formation. The first aquifer with a so-called free water table circulates in the sandy formations. The second aquifer, at the base of the model, is said to be captive under low-permeability formations.
Different tubes represent drillings. The purpose of the simulation is to show that water generally circulates in the subsoil not in the form of a river but in the interstices of the rocks
Groundwater is impacted by anthropogenic uses
We first explain the impact regarding water quality: with the maquette, we show also the circulation of a plume of pollution which contaminates a water table. We explain also how a part of the aquifer can be polluted without polluting this other because the second one is protected by an impermeable level. We explained also how pollution that comes into the ground can appear in a river connected to the aquifer.
Secondly, we explain how our anthropogenic uses can have an impact on water quantity by questioning the visitors through french water samplings and french water consumptions.
Monitoring is important to better understand and manage groundwater
A sensor was brought and tested with participants to explain to them how the groundwater measurement is done. It was the opportunity to present the CLEPSYDRA project and the importance of groundwater monitoring to improve water management.
