Tracers

Abstract

It may be of scientific as well as of economic interest to know the origin of a springs’s water, or where losses of water in the underground flow to. Problems arising from such questions can often not be solved directly, even though, with the help of geology, an underground catchment area is roughly comprehensible. It is not unusual that watersheds at the surface are not identical with underground watersheds. The showpiece is the Danube’s loss of water, in which case the water runs under the European watershed to flow into the Untersee near Constance and into the Rhine.