Mine Water Hydrology

Hydrology is a relatively young science, which has developed gradually out of the hydraulic expedients which underpin much of civil engineering practice. Indeed, the emergence of truly scientific hydrology is such a recent development that major textbooks and learned journals have until recently devoted many pages to discussing its scientific credentials (Bras, 1990; Wilby, 1997). Until the 1980s most hydrological analysis was concerned with purely

physical

processes and practices of engineering interest, such as rainfall-runoff modelling and flow-net analysis of seepage pathways. By the start of the 21st Century, the scope of hydrology has expanded to such an extent that it now embraces relevant areas of chemistry and ecology. Sub-disciplines such as hydrogeochemistry (e.g. Appelo and Postma, 1994) and hydroecology (or ecohydrology; Baird and Wilby, 1999) are now firmly established, and account for a large proportion of the innovation in hydrological science (see, for instance, Wilby, 1997, and Wheater and Kirby, 1998). The “scientification” of hydrology has now proceeded to such an extent that Wilby (1997) could claim that hydrology provides the most logical basis for ‘holistic environmental science’, since water is a prominent medium in all of the earth and life sciences which deal with the natural environment. In the light of these trends, a contemporary definition of hydrology might be given as follows:

“Hydrology is the science which deals with the nature, movement and environmental functions of terrestrial natural waters”