Where water is, where it goes, and how fast the ice is going.
8 topics · 10 curated works
No prior grounding assumed.
The Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers, Ice and Glaciers
John Tyndall · 1872
Explains glacier motion, crevassing and the blue colour of ice as consequences of ice's internal structure, written to make physical glaciology…
+2 more at this level
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Massive Water Scarcity Now Threatening Africa: Why Isn't It Being Addressed?
Malin Falkenmark · 1989
Introduces a per-capita water availability threshold below which a country is classed as water-stressed, and argues Africa's rapid population growth…
+1 more at this level
Primary sources and full treatments.
The Relation Between the Lowering of the Piezometric Surface and the Rate and Duration of Discharge of a Well Using Ground-Water Storage
Charles V. Theis · 1935
Borrows the mathematics of heat conduction to derive how a pumped well draws down the water table around it over time, still the equation aquifer…
+4 more at this level
10 works
John Tyndall
Explains glacier motion, crevassing and the blue colour of ice as consequences of ice's internal structure, written to make physical glaciology intelligible to a general reader.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Thomas C. Winter, Judson W. Harvey, O. Lehn Franke & William M. Alley
Argues that groundwater and surface water are one interconnected system, not two separate resources, so pumping a well or draining a wetland always shows up somewhere else in the water balance.
link checked 17 Sept 2026The World Bank
Models how water scarcity intensified by climate change will subtract from GDP growth region by region, and argues the loss is largely avoidable through water allocation and efficiency policy rather than new supply alone.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Malin Falkenmark
Introduces a per-capita water availability threshold below which a country is classed as water-stressed, and argues Africa's rapid population growth was on course to cross it in country after country.
Pamela J. Edwards, Jon E. Schoonover & Karl W. J. Williard
Argues that watershed management works only when it treats the whole catchment as the unit of analysis, because land use anywhere upstream shows up in water quality and quantity downstream.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Charles V. Theis
Borrows the mathematics of heat conduction to derive how a pumped well draws down the water table around it over time, still the equation aquifer tests are fitted to.
link checked 17 Sept 2026J. F. Nye
Treats glacier flow as the plastic deformation of a solid rather than the motion of a viscous fluid, giving the first quantitative theory that predicts observed ice-sheet profiles and velocity distributions.
link failing as of 17 Sept 2026Luna B. Leopold & Thomas Maddock Jr.
Shows that a river's width, depth and velocity all scale with discharge by simple power laws, so a channel's shape is not arbitrary but a predictable response to how much water moves through it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Eric A. Anderson
Sets out a temperature-index model for how a snowpack accumulates and melts that became the U.S. National Weather Service's operational method for forecasting snowmelt runoff.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Johannes Weertman
Shows mathematically that a marine ice sheet grounded on a bed that deepens inland has an unstable equilibrium, so once its grounding line starts retreating the retreat can run away on its own.
link checked 17 Sept 2026