Groundwater in integrated environmental consideration

Abstract

The co-existence and thus the association and mutual interaction between the geological world (abiotic phase) and the biological world (biotic phase) and the role of the water, especially of the subsurface water, is a very old scientific field. This subject the last decades became particularly interest in the frame of the ecosystem’s study. The previous predominant consideration declared that the geological phase is the material “on which” or “in which” the living world survives and evolutes. To-day, our knowledge goes beyond this simplified consideration. The discussed co-existence seems to be more complicated, the detected interactions seem to be more crucial and intensives and it is about a dynamic symbiosis of the two worlds, where one main bridge is the water, mainly the subsurface water. Initially the science of ecology, the concepts of ecosystems and the environmental maintenance and improvement, formed a scientific field of Biology. Although biologists did not forget the role of the geological environment, their main target became the living beings. The last decades, Geology assumed to reappoint its targets, oriented to the Environmental Geology, which includes the study of the ecosystems from the geological point of view. At the same time, ecosystems reminded themselves that they dispose a geological side equally important as the biological side. The abiotic and the biotic world (cosmos) although are separated by inviolate borders, they present an active and mutual interaction in the frame of their symbiosis and association.