Abstract

TINEO, Alfredo. Richard Stappenbeck: the first hidrogeologist in Argentina. Ser. correl. geol. [online]. 2008, n.24, pp.127-136. ISSN 1666-9479.

At the beginning of the last century an important group of German geologists came to Argentina in order to participate in a research program created by the Direccion de Minas, Geologia e Hidrologia which intended to do geological research all over the country. Dr. Ricardo Stappenbeck, born on May 2nd1880 in Salzwedel, in Hannover, Germany, took part of the program and his first destination was to check the drillings in Comodoro Rivadavia in 1908, some months after having discovered oil through a drilling aimed at looking for water on December 13th1907.From that moment on, he did some work on geological recognition in Chubut, San Juan and Mendoza Precordillera area, where he did several valuable observations on the geological structure in the South of the Cacheuta mount (where some time later the first oil drillings were placed), and in the Northwest of Argentina. The province of Tucuman received the visit of the wise man several times between 1915 and 1921, where he left the founding of hydrogeology of the oriental plain, with a detailed map in a 1:500.000 scale.His observations in the Argentinean regional geological environment allowed him to dedicate more emphatically to the study of the hydrogeology all over the country, based on the underground information offered by the amount of drillings done by the Direccion de Minas, Geologia e Hidrlogia during the first decades of the century and the information provided by several other German geologists who, like G Bodenbender, shared their observations in Cordoba and La Rioja. He also highlights in his work the drillings done by the Direccion de Ferrocarriles (railway) which offered drillings profiles and water analysis. His hydrogeological comments cover most the country, from the Rio Colorado in the North and from the Cordillera to Rio de la Plata. These observations allowed him to summarize part of his work in the most significant hydrogeological work ever done in the country: Geologie und grundwasserkunde der Pampa, published in Stuttgart in 1926, back in his Germany. The hydrogeological work Stappenbeck did was based on the significant knowledge about the regional geology which enabled him to determine the limits of the most important hydrogeological basin, leaving out the idea that "...the ground water comes from the Cordillera, thus the pampeano ground is the recipient of the water that recharge from the Andes..." Ricardo Stappenbeck died on July 16th1963, in Munich Germany, and based on his endless work in our country during the first decades of the 20thcentury, we consider him the first hydrogeologist in the country.

Keywords : Hydrogeogist; History; Stappenbeck.

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