Wastewater Reuse and Managed Aquifer Recharge as Pathways to Climate-Resilient Groundwater Sustainability

Groundwater deserves particular attention because it is often the hidden reserve that societies depend on during droughts, agricultural stress and periods of surface-water scarcity. Yet it remains one of the least visible and most weakly governed components of the water cycle. In many regions, there are still major data gaps concerning recharge rates, abstraction volumes, aquifer storage decline, recovery time, quality deterioration and the interaction between groundwater and surface water.Water and wastewater management practices sit at the center of closing these gaps. Treated wastewater and reclaimed water are increasingly used as a deliberate input to managed aquifer recharge, turning wastewater infrastructure into a groundwater-security asset rather than a discharge problem; conversely, aquifer contamination - from nitrate, salinized irrigation return flows, heavy metals and emerging contaminants - is frequently a downstream signature of upstream water and wastewater treatment gaps. The physical-chemical and biological treatment processes that remove these contaminants before recharge or reuse, and the engineering design of infiltration and injection systems themselves, fall squarely within water and wastewater management practice, not adjacent to it.This Research Topic centers on wastewater reuse and circular water strategies as the pathway to groundwater security, distinguishing it from broader hydrogeological or governance-focused work on groundwater. The key scientific and managerial gap is the lack of integrated approaches that consider groundwater quantity, quality, recharge uncertainty, land-use pressure and governance together, with treated wastewater and reclaimed water as central levers for closing it. This theme is highly important because long-term water security will depend on whether aquifers can be monitored, protected, recharged and governed as shared strategic resources rather than treated as emergency reserves.Sub-topics:• Managed aquifer recharge using treated wastewater and reclaimed water, artificial recharge, and floodwater harvesting• Treatment technologies (physical-chemical and biological) for contaminant removal prior to aquifer recharge or reuse• Nature-based solutions for recharge, including wetlands, riparian buffers and permeable landscapes• Groundwater quality risks: nitrate, salinization, heavy metals and emerging contaminants, and their links to wastewater and irrigation-return-flow management• Numerical and machine-learning-based modeling of aquifer recharge from treated wastewater and reclaimed water, uncertainty quantification, contaminant transport, and aquifer response under climate variability• Coastal aquifers and seawater intrusion: managed recharge with treated wastewater and reclaimed water as a climate-resilient, circular strategy against salinity risks• Governance of wastewater reuse and managed aquifer recharge schemes, water-reuse regulation, and circular water allocation policies for sustainable abstraction Topic editors: Ahmet ÇELEBİ, Sara Todeschini, Jianxun (Jennifer) He, Gökmen Çeribaşı, Saim Ozdemir, Nusret Karakaya Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/85598/wastewater-reuse-and-managed-aquifer-recharge-as-pathways-to-climate-resilient-groundwater-sustainability