Guest Editors' preface

Excerpt

About three years ago Cliff Voss, the Executive Editor of Hydrogeology Journal, asked the readers of the journal to send him ideas for the theme issue of March 2005. R. Llamas suggested that in that issue (The Future of Hydrogeology), it might be good to highlight the need for a closer relationship between the natural and social sciences, in order to achieve better governance of groundwater or, in other fashionable words, to facilitate a sustainable use of groundwater resources. As a consequence of this suggestion, T. Shah and A. Mukherji were invited to write a paper (appearing as the last one in the March 2005 theme issue (Mukherji and Shah 2005)). A few months later Cliff wrote to us inviting us to be the Guest Editors for the theme issue of 2006, which will be devoted mainly to social, economic, institutional and political issues related to groundwater sustainability. We accepted and have looked for the topics, authors and reviewers of the corresponding manuscripts. The final result of our work are the 12 articles of this issue. This issue deals with a general, current problem: the gap between Society and Science and Technology. …