TY - JOUR

T1 - Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water Distribution for the Maintenance of Ecosystems, their Services and Biodiversity

AU - Schlattmann, Anna

AU - Neuendorf, Felix

AU - Burkhard, Kremena

AU - Probst, Elisabeth

AU - Pujades, Estanislao

AU - Mauser, Wolfram

AU - Attinger, Sabine

AU - von Haaren, Christina

N1 - Funding Information: The research of the authors is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) (grant number 02WGR1423D). Open Access funding enabled and organized by Projekt DEAL. The authors acknowledge the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) for funding this research. The authors thank the entire ViWA project team for supportive discussions. Further thanks go to Rohini Kumar, Oldrich Rakovec, Luis Samaniego and Stephan Thober from the UfZ Leipzig who provided hydrological data from the mHM model with which we could test our indicators. We also thank Alwin Henschel and Mareike Plinke for their assistance in the implementation of the GIS models. Finally, we thank Jürgen Böttcher from the Institute of Soil Science, Leibniz University Hannover, for his support in questions on soil-water characteristics. Conceptualization: AS; Methodology: AS, FN, KB with contributions from EP, WM, EP and CvonH; Formal analysis and investigation: FN, AS; Writing—original draft preparation: AS, with contributions from EP and EPu; Writing—review and editing: All authors; Model data: EP, WM, EPu; Further resources: FN, AS; Supervision: CvonH.

PY - 2022/8

Y1 - 2022/8

N2 - Water provision and distribution are subject to conflicts between users worldwide, with agriculture as a major driver of discords. Water sensitive ecosystems and their services are often impaired by man-made water shortage. Nevertheless, they are not sufficiently included in sustainability or risk assessments and neglected when it comes to distribution of available water resources. The herein presented contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6) and Life on Land (SDG 15) is the Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water distribution (ESAW-tool). The ESAW-tool introduces a watershed sustainability assessment that evaluates the sustainability of the water supply-demand ratio on basin level, where domestic water use and the water requirements of ecosystems are considered as most important water users. An ecological risk assessment estimates potential impacts of agricultural depletion of renewable water resources on (ground)water-dependent ecosystems. The ESAW-tool works in standard GIS applications and is applicable in basins worldwide with a set of broadly available input data. The ESAW-tool is tested in the Danube river basin through combination of high-resolution hydro-agroecological model data (hydrological land surface process model PROMET and groundwater model OpenGeoSys) and further freely available data (water use, biodiversity and wetlands maps). Based on the results, measures for more sustainable water management can be deduced, such as increase of rainfed agriculture near vulnerable ecosystems or change of certain crops. The tool can support decision making of authorities from local to national level as well as private enterprises who want to improve the sustainability of their supply chains.

AB - Water provision and distribution are subject to conflicts between users worldwide, with agriculture as a major driver of discords. Water sensitive ecosystems and their services are often impaired by man-made water shortage. Nevertheless, they are not sufficiently included in sustainability or risk assessments and neglected when it comes to distribution of available water resources. The herein presented contribution to the Sustainable Development Goals Clean Water and Sanitation (SDG 6) and Life on Land (SDG 15) is the Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water distribution (ESAW-tool). The ESAW-tool introduces a watershed sustainability assessment that evaluates the sustainability of the water supply-demand ratio on basin level, where domestic water use and the water requirements of ecosystems are considered as most important water users. An ecological risk assessment estimates potential impacts of agricultural depletion of renewable water resources on (ground)water-dependent ecosystems. The ESAW-tool works in standard GIS applications and is applicable in basins worldwide with a set of broadly available input data. The ESAW-tool is tested in the Danube river basin through combination of high-resolution hydro-agroecological model data (hydrological land surface process model PROMET and groundwater model OpenGeoSys) and further freely available data (water use, biodiversity and wetlands maps). Based on the results, measures for more sustainable water management can be deduced, such as increase of rainfed agriculture near vulnerable ecosystems or change of certain crops. The tool can support decision making of authorities from local to national level as well as private enterprises who want to improve the sustainability of their supply chains.

KW - Biodiversity

KW - Ecosystem Services

KW - GIS

KW - SDGs

KW - Sustainability assessment

KW - Water distribution

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85131841904&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1007/s00267-022-01662-3

DO - 10.1007/s00267-022-01662-3

M3 - Article

C2 - 35699739

AN - SCOPUS:85131841904

VL - 70

SP - 329

EP - 349

JO - Environmental management

JF - Environmental management

SN - 0364-152X

IS - 2

ER -