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WHAT WE CAN LEARN ABOUT GROUNDWATER BY ANALYTICAL COMPOSITION ANALYSIS

Croatia is one of the few countries that has significant reserves of clean drinking water and is on 5th place in Europe and 42nd in the world. 68.9% of fresh water is trapped in glaciers, 0.3% in lakes and rivers, and 30.8% in groundwater. Croatia has sufficient water supplies for its needs for the next few decades, and a significant water wealth is groundwater (12%), which in about 85% is used for water supply. Groundwater is found inside cavities and pores in the soil and in rocks. They are formed by infiltration or gravitational leachate from the surface in the process of circulating water in nature which is a constant process and which enables life on the planet: water from the sea and ocean evaporates, condenses in the atmosphere and falls to the ground in various forms. Surface or underground currents reach the sea and oceans again, and the process is constantly repeated. Isotopes are forms of a chemical element that have the same number of protons, but different numbers of neutrons in the nucleus and therefore different atomic weights. Since water consists of oxygen and hydrogen atoms, the analysis of their isotopes ratios can provide very useful information on groundwater flows, geographical origin of bottled water, identification of water sources, monitoring food to its place of production and detection of counterfeits, identifying plant growth conditions, research into the history of climate events and analysis of ice cores, and understanding the flow of water originating from the ocean.

groundwater, isotopic composition, geographical origin, climate events

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