This multilingual, online version of the classic hydrogeology textbook, Groundwater by Freeze and Cherry (1979), is now maintained and developed by The Groundwater Project.
The online book was originally created by Hydrogeologists Without Borders (HWB) beginning in 2016 (see history below). The online book was moved from HWB’s website to GW-P’s website to better consolidate it with the Groundwater Project publications. The Groundwater Project will continue translating the book into additional languages to broaden its worldwide accessibility.
The inaugural meeting for this project was organized by Cathryn Ryan and held in Guelph, Ontario in 2016. The meeting was attended by John Cherry, Robert Gilham, Beth Parker, William Alley, Douglas Mackay, Robert Cleary and Warren Wood. Cathryn Ryan then worked with the original copyright holder (Pearson Education Inc.) to obtain permission to legally return the copyright to the authors who then gave HWB permission to digitize and translate the textbook.
Cathryn Ryan and David Bethune obtained funding through the University of Calgary from Alberta Open Educational Resources to hire Aimee Lo and Tory Laliberte to digitize the textbook and create the webpages for HWB. Color versions of the chapter title graphics were kindly provided by Peter Russell who created the original graphics for the book. GW Solutions provided long-term support to get the project started.
A large team of translators has been working to make the book available in Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese as delineated on the “about” page.
We look forward to you visiting the free-access online versions of Groundwater by Freeze and Cherry because it continues to be a valuable reference.