The Web of Water Peter Weber and Frank Dowman Ecology teaches us that the environment is interconnected. Like the web of life, the web of water pervades the environment. To truly understand the water cycle, we need to monitor water throughout its movements and forms - as groundwater, surface water, and atmospheric water. A watershed includes both a visible and an invisible portion. We are usually much more aware of the visible part - the surface water.
Water is continually on the move through the water cycle.
And as the water exchanges between the ground and the surface, it can carry pollutants with it. When we see contaminated surface water, the pollutants might actually be coming from groundwater. If we have contaminated well water, the pollutants might be from surface sources. Clearly, then, investigating the groundwater-surface water connection is critical if we are to truly monitor the whole watershed. If there is groundwater monitoring, it is usually confined to well sampling, so that the dynamic groundwater-surface water relationship is not explicitly investigated.