Hydro-ecology of groundwater-dependent ecosystems: applying basic science to groundwater management

Aldous, Allison; Bach, Leslie

doi:10.1080/02626667.2014.889296

Cited by 29 publications

(40 citation statements)

References 57 publications

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“…Aquatic environments that rely on the flow or chemical characteristics of groundwater are collectively known as groundwater‐dependent ecosystems (Aldous & Bach, ; Aldous & Bach, ; Rohde, Froend, & Howard, ). This definition recognizes the pivotal role of groundwater in underpinning ecological communities associated with streams, rivers, springs, and wetlands, as well as with underground caves or phreatophyte ecosystems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long‐term effects of aquifer overdraft and recovery on groundwater quality in a Ramsar wetland: Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park, Spain

Castaño

Losa

Martínez‐Santos

et al. 2018

Hydrological Processes

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Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park is one of Spain's most representative groundwater‐dependent ecosystems. Under natural conditions, water inflows combined brackish surface water from River Gigüela with freshwater inputs from River Guadiana and the underlying aquifer. Since the mid‐1970s, aquifer overexploitation caused the desiccation of the wetlands and neighbouring springs. The National Park remained in precarious hydrological conditions for three decades, with the only exception of rapid floods due to extreme rainfall events and sporadic water transfers from other basins. In the late 2000s, a decrease in groundwater abstraction and an extraordinarily wet period reversed the trend. The aquifer experienced an unexpected recovery of groundwater levels (over 20 m in some areas), thus restoring groundwater discharge to springs and wetlands. The complex historical evolution of the water balance in this site has resulted in substantial changes in surface and groundwater quality. This becomes evident when comparing the pre‐1980 groundwater quality and the hydrochemical status in the wetland in two different periods, under “dry” and “wet” conditions. Although the system is close to full recovery from the groundwater‐level viewpoint, bouncing back in the major hydrochemical constituents has not yet been obtained. These still appear to evolve in response to the previous overexploitation state. Moreover, in some sectors, there are groundwater‐dependent ecosystems that remain different to those found in preoverexploitation times. The experience of Las Tablas de Damiel provides an observatory of long‐term changes in wetland water quality, demonstrating that the effects of aquifer overexploitation on aquatic ecosystems are more than a mere alteration of the water balance and that groundwater quality is the key to aquifer and aquatic ecosystem sustainability.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Long‐term effects of aquifer overdraft and recovery on groundwater quality in a Ramsar wetland: Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park, Spain

Castaño

Losa

Martínez‐Santos

et al. 2018

Hydrological Processes

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“…Defining water needs for wetlands is challenging, because the term wetlands embraces many different ecosystem types that may have very different hydrological characteristics, even when they are geographically close to each other (de la Hera and Murillo 2014). Aldous and Bach (2014) found that, for fens in Oregon, USA, water table depth is the critical issue rather than river flow, with a required water table within 35 cm of the surface. Hendriks et al (2014) reported that drainage and groundwater abstraction in sandy catchments in the Netherlands meant that low flows were reduced below the environmental flow criterion, whilst Kennen et al (2014) found that groundwater abstraction led to a 20% reduction in intolerant macro-invertebrates in New Jersey, USA, due to reduced river flow.…”

Section: Historical Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

The changing role of ecohydrological science in guiding environmental flows

Acreman

Overton

King

et al. 2014

Hydrological Sciences Journal

134

122

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The term "environmental flows" is now widely used to reflect the hydrological regime required to sustain freshwater and estuarine ecosystems, and the human livelihoods and well-being that depend on them. The definition suggests a central role for ecohydrological science to help determine a required flow regime for a target ecosystem condition. Indeed, many countries have established laws and policies to implement environmental flows with the expectation that science can deliver the answers. This article provides an overview of recent developments and applications of environmental flows on six continents to explore the changing role of ecohydrological sciences, recognizing its limitations and the emerging needs of society, water resource managers and policy makers. Science has responded with new methods to link hydrology to ecosystem status, but these have also raised fundamental questions that go beyond ecohydrology, such as who decides on the target condition of the ecosystem? Some environmental flow methods are based on the natural flow paradigm, which assumes the desired regime is the natural "unmodified" condition. However, this may be unrealistic where flow regimes have been altered for many centuries and are likely to change with future climate change. Ecosystems are dynamic, so the adoption of environmental flows needs to have a similar dynamic basis. Furthermore, methodological developments have been made in two directions: first, broad-scale hydrological analysis of flow regimes (assuming ecological relevance of hydrograph components) and, second, analysis of ecological impacts of more than one stressor (e.g. flow, morphology, water quality). All methods retain a degree of uncertainty, which translates into risks, and raises questions regarding trust between scientists and the public. Communication between scientists, social scientists, practitioners, policy makers and the public is thus becoming as important as the quality of the science. lois et des politiques de mise en oeuvre de débits environnementaux en espérant que la science peut fournir les réponses. Ce document donne un aperçu des développements et des applications récents de débits environnementaux sur les six continents dans le but d'explorer l'évolution du rôle des sciences éco-hydrologiques, en reconnaissant leurs limites et les nouveaux besoins de la société, des gestionnaires des ressources en eau et des décideurs politiques. La science a répondu par de nouvelles méthodes pour relier l'hydrologie à l'état des écosystèmes, mais à cette occasion des questions fondamentales ont été soulevées qui vont au-delà de l'éco-hydrologie, telles que : qui décide de l'état souhaité pour un écosystème ? Certaines méthodes de débits environnementaux sont basées sur le paradigme de l'écoulement naturel, ce qui suppose que le régime souhaité est la condition naturelle « non modifiée ». Cela peut être irréaliste là où les régimes d'écoulement ont été modifiés pendant de nombreux siècles et sont susceptibles d'évoluer avec le changement climatique ...

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“…Other factors such as land cover, land use practices, surface water dynamics, and water quality are important for the characterization of the response of GDEs [44], evaluation of the impacts of natural events and anthropogenic actions on GDEs [17,20,45], and for estimating the volume of groundwater required by GDEs [46]. However, these factors are not included in our simplified model framework.…”

Section: Study Areamentioning

confidence: 99%

Estimating the Probability of Vegetation to Be Groundwater Dependent Based on the Evaluation of Tree Models

2016

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Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems (GDEs) are increasingly threatened by humans' rising demand for water resources. Consequently, it is imperative to identify the location of GDEs to protect them. This paper develops a methodology to identify the probability of an ecosystem to be groundwater dependent. Probabilities are obtained by modeling the relationship between the known locations of GDEs and factors influencing groundwater dependence, namely water table depth and climatic aridity index. Probabilities are derived for the state of Nevada, USA, using modeled water table depth and aridity index values obtained from the Global Aridity database. The model selected results from the performance comparison of classification trees (CT) and random forests (RF). Based on a threshold-independent accuracy measure, RF has a better ability to generate probability estimates. Considering a threshold that minimizes the misclassification rate for each model, RF also proves to be more accurate. Regarding training accuracy, performance measures such as accuracy, sensitivity, and specificity are higher for RF. For the test set, higher values of accuracy and kappa for CT highlight the fact that these measures are greatly affected by low prevalence. As shown for RF, the choice of the cutoff probability value has important consequences on model accuracy and the overall proportion of locations where GDEs are found.

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Hydro-ecology of groundwater-dependent ecosystems: applying basic science to groundwater management

Cited by 29 publications

References 57 publications

Long‐term effects of aquifer overdraft and recovery on groundwater quality in a Ramsar wetland: Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park, Spain

Long‐term effects of aquifer overdraft and recovery on groundwater quality in a Ramsar wetland: Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park, Spain

The changing role of ecohydrological science in guiding environmental flows

Estimating the Probability of Vegetation to Be Groundwater Dependent Based on the Evaluation of Tree Models

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