246 Best Practices for Developing International Collaborations in the Geosciences
This session invites presentations on successful scientist to scientist international collaborations in the geosciences in research and educational activities, focussing on how they developed and keys to their success. It will also explore how organizations can help foster international collaborations/engagements.
Wednesday, 22 October 2025
8:00 AM - 12:00 PM
HBGCC, 301A
The Groundwater Project: Global Groundwater Education – Making Groundwater Understandable for Children & Broad Readership
Paper number: 246-11
Program: Technical Sessions
Time: 10:45 AM – 11:00 AM
Authors
Abstract
The Groundwater Project (GW-Project), a Canadian NGO (www.gw-project.org), was established to become a global repository for books of synthesized groundwater knowledge and related subject matter, written by expert volunteers. The Project provides free, high-quality, educational books as PDFs for downloading and webbooks for reading online.
Including water in early education curricula is key to fostering environmental stewardship while making children aware of possible careers in a water-related field. Innovative educational materials like children’s books, comics, videos, and interactive games can be powerful tools for engaging young learners. A key goal of the GW-Project is to provide content that can be used by teachers. Furthermore, the GW-Project publishes books tailored toward the wider audience – a book – to be published in Fall 2025, addresses the most common questions about groundwater aimed at accessibility by readers with diverse educational backgrounds. It connects the dots between water physics, hydraulics, the role of groundwater in the water cycle, water wells, and aquifer tests—with attention to how geology plays a role—and explains groundwater protection and sustainability. The intent of this book is to be part of the solution by creating tools for groundwater awareness. This book has a facilitating role and is a starting point for those (students) who have an interest in studying groundwater but also for anyone, including the broader community and decision makers (at various levels of governance) tasked with managing groundwater resources in their respective jurisdictions. In this presentation, the GW-Project presents their progress, vision and collaborations on preparing content for Children’s education and the wider audience.
Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 57, No. 6
doi: 10.1130/abs/2025AM-414940
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