Abbé Paramelle (1790-1875), Pioneer Karst Hydrogeologist
Patricia Bobeck, PhD
Abbé Jean-Baptiste Paramelle (1790-1875) was a French priest assigned to a parish on the limestone plateau called the Causses du Quercy in the Department of Lot in southwestern France. His parishioners complained bitterly about the lack of water for their animals, their crops, and themselves. Paramelle decided to figure out where the rainfall went. He walked the plateau for nine years before he figured out where it went and how to access it at shallow depth, and in so doing documented some basic karst concepts. In 1827 he wrote a report to the local government to publicize his discovery. With a subsidy, he tried his method at five locations and found water at all of them. His fame spread fast and over the next three decades, Paramelle prospected for water in 40 of France’s departments and found shallow groundwater in 10,000 places. In 1856 he wrote The Art of Finding Springs, a best-seller that was reprinted five times and translated long ago into German and Spanish. I translated it into English as part of my 2017 dissertation. In 2019 the Geological Society of America published it as Special Paper 539.
