A cross-section of the ground, drawn live. Your browser could not start the canvas — the water table normally sits mid-section here, flowing.
Vadose zone · unsaturated
Saturated zone · the aquifer
Clay aquitard · impermeable
Well
01 · Infiltration
Down through the pores
Rain doesn't run off here — it soaks into sand and gravel and creeps down through the vadose zone, the unsaturated ground where air and water share the pore space.
02 · The water table
A surface with no floor
Below a certain depth every pore is full. That boundary is the water table: not a pipe, not a lake — a free surface that rises when it rains and slopes gently toward wherever the water is leaving.
03 · Cone of depression
What a well takes back
Pump a well and the table can't stay level. It sags into a cone of depression, steepest at the casing, pulling groundwater in from every direction until the aquifer can't keep up.