JEAN-BAPTISTE PARAMELLE: PIONEER KARST HYDROGEOLOGIST

Jean-Baptiste Paramelle (1790-1875) was a country priest who in 1818 began looking for water for his parishioners, who lived on a dry limestone plateau, the Causse de Gramat, in the Department of Lot in southwestern France. By 1827, when geology was in its infancy as a science and before the word karst had entered the geologic vocabulary, the self-taught “naturalist” Paramelle had discovered karst features and had found groundwater in karst. With a subsidy from the local government Paramelle started working as a "hydroscope" finding water for individuals and communities. By the end of his exploration career in 1854 he had found groundwater in more than 10,000 locations in 40 of France’s 89 departments and had requests for his services from 37 additional departments. In his retirement, he wrote a book entitled “The Art of Finding Springs” which he published in 1856. It is a manual for the general public on how to find groundwater based on his observational method, extensive reading, and decades of field work. Paramelle’s keys to finding water are permeability contrast, the thalweg and its associated underground conduit, and geomorphology. His karst discoveries include the connection between swallow holes and resurgences (springs) and the relationship between aligned dolines and underground conduits.

In his 1856 publication, the Public Fountains of the City of Dijon, Henry Darcy describes Paramelle as the man who has “done the most work on underground hydrography in recent years.” Paramelle’s book was a best seller; it was reprinted five times and translated into German and Spanish. O.E. Meinzer ranks Paramelle as one of the originators of ground-water hydrology, along with Darcy, Dupuit, and Belgrand. The Geological Society of America has accepted the presenter’s English translation of Paramelle’s book for publication to give English speakers an opportunity to discover the accomplishments of this pioneer of karst hydrogeology.