Aquifers and Darcy's law of groundwater flow
Acuíferos y ley de Darcy del flujo subterráneo
- Date
- 1856 · confidence high
- Place
- Dijon, France
- Credited to
- Henry Darcy; Grenelle artesian wells (1841)
- People
- 👤 Henry Darcy1803–1858
- Field
- Cosmos & Earth
What was discovered
Designing Dijon's water supply, Darcy established that the flow rate through a porous medium is proportional to the hydraulic gradient. With the artesian wells of Paris it was shown that geological formations store and transmit water on a large scale.
Coordinates of Dijon, where Darcy carried out his experiments with sand columns.
What it led to
- Hydrogeology and aquifer exploitation
- Pump-irrigated agriculture (Ogallala, India)
- Aquifer depletion as a global problem
Built on
- Steno's principles of stratigraphy1669
- Quantified hydrological cycle1674-1686
- Water cycle (Perrault)
Made possible
- Groundwater flow models
- Sand filters for drinking water