Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale
Balancing human communities’ and ecosystems’ need for freshwater is one of the major challenges of the 21st century as population growth and improved living conditions put increasing pressure on freshwater resources. While frameworks to assess the environmental impacts of freshwater consumption have...
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ftunivwagenin:oai:library.wur.nl:wurpubs/613010 2024-04-28T08:02:06+00:00 Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale Pierrat, Eleonore Dorber, Martin de Graaf, Inge Laurent, Alexis Hauschild, Michael Z. Rygaard, Martin Barbarossa, Valerio 2023 application/pdf https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/multicompartment-depletion-factors-for-water-consumption-on-a-glo https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04803 en eng https://edepot.wur.nl/591192 https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/multicompartment-depletion-factors-for-water-consumption-on-a-glo doi:10.1021/acs.est.2c04803 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Wageningen University & Research Environmental Science and Technology 57 (2023) 10 ISSN: 0013-936X ecosystem freshwater availability impact assessment sustainability water management Article/Letter to editor 2023 ftunivwagenin https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04803 2024-04-03T14:41:12Z Balancing human communities’ and ecosystems’ need for freshwater is one of the major challenges of the 21st century as population growth and improved living conditions put increasing pressure on freshwater resources. While frameworks to assess the environmental impacts of freshwater consumption have been proposed at the regional scale, an operational method to evaluate the consequences of consumption on different compartments of the water system and account for their interdependence is missing at the global scale. Here, we develop depletion factors that simultaneously quantify the effects of water consumption on streamflow, groundwater storage, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration globally. We estimate freshwater availability and water consumption using the output of a global-scale surface water-groundwater model for the period 1960-2000. The resulting depletion factors are provided for 8,664 river basins, representing 93% of the landmass with significant water consumption, i.e., excluding Greenland, Antarctica, deserts, and permanently frozen areas. Our findings show that water consumption leads to the largest water loss in rivers, followed by aquifers and soil, while simultaneously increasing evapotranspiration. Depletion factors vary regionally with ranges of up to four orders of magnitude depending on the annual consumption level, the type of water used, aridity, and water transfers between compartments. Our depletion factors provide valuable insights into the intertwined effects of surface and groundwater consumption on several hydrological variables over a specified period. The developed depletion factors can be integrated into sustainability assessment tools to quantify the ecological impacts of water consumption and help guide sustainable water management strategies, while accounting for the performance limitations of the underlying model. Article in Journal/Newspaper Antarc* Antarctica Greenland Wageningen UR (University & Research Centre): Digital Library Environmental Science & Technology 57 10 4318 4331 |
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Open Polar |
collection |
Wageningen UR (University & Research Centre): Digital Library |
op_collection_id |
ftunivwagenin |
language |
English |
topic |
ecosystem freshwater availability impact assessment sustainability water management |
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ecosystem freshwater availability impact assessment sustainability water management Pierrat, Eleonore Dorber, Martin de Graaf, Inge Laurent, Alexis Hauschild, Michael Z. Rygaard, Martin Barbarossa, Valerio Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale |
topic_facet |
ecosystem freshwater availability impact assessment sustainability water management |
description |
Balancing human communities’ and ecosystems’ need for freshwater is one of the major challenges of the 21st century as population growth and improved living conditions put increasing pressure on freshwater resources. While frameworks to assess the environmental impacts of freshwater consumption have been proposed at the regional scale, an operational method to evaluate the consequences of consumption on different compartments of the water system and account for their interdependence is missing at the global scale. Here, we develop depletion factors that simultaneously quantify the effects of water consumption on streamflow, groundwater storage, soil moisture, and evapotranspiration globally. We estimate freshwater availability and water consumption using the output of a global-scale surface water-groundwater model for the period 1960-2000. The resulting depletion factors are provided for 8,664 river basins, representing 93% of the landmass with significant water consumption, i.e., excluding Greenland, Antarctica, deserts, and permanently frozen areas. Our findings show that water consumption leads to the largest water loss in rivers, followed by aquifers and soil, while simultaneously increasing evapotranspiration. Depletion factors vary regionally with ranges of up to four orders of magnitude depending on the annual consumption level, the type of water used, aridity, and water transfers between compartments. Our depletion factors provide valuable insights into the intertwined effects of surface and groundwater consumption on several hydrological variables over a specified period. The developed depletion factors can be integrated into sustainability assessment tools to quantify the ecological impacts of water consumption and help guide sustainable water management strategies, while accounting for the performance limitations of the underlying model. |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Pierrat, Eleonore Dorber, Martin de Graaf, Inge Laurent, Alexis Hauschild, Michael Z. Rygaard, Martin Barbarossa, Valerio |
author_facet |
Pierrat, Eleonore Dorber, Martin de Graaf, Inge Laurent, Alexis Hauschild, Michael Z. Rygaard, Martin Barbarossa, Valerio |
author_sort |
Pierrat, Eleonore |
title |
Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale |
title_short |
Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale |
title_full |
Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale |
title_fullStr |
Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale |
title_full_unstemmed |
Multicompartment Depletion Factors for Water Consumption on a Global Scale |
title_sort |
multicompartment depletion factors for water consumption on a global scale |
publishDate |
2023 |
url |
https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/multicompartment-depletion-factors-for-water-consumption-on-a-glo https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04803 |
genre |
Antarc* Antarctica Greenland |
genre_facet |
Antarc* Antarctica Greenland |
op_source |
Environmental Science and Technology 57 (2023) 10 ISSN: 0013-936X |
op_relation |
https://edepot.wur.nl/591192 https://research.wur.nl/en/publications/multicompartment-depletion-factors-for-water-consumption-on-a-glo doi:10.1021/acs.est.2c04803 |
op_rights |
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Wageningen University & Research |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.2c04803 |
container_title |
Environmental Science & Technology |
container_volume |
57 |
container_issue |
10 |
container_start_page |
4318 |
op_container_end_page |
4331 |
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1797573568942309376 |