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Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE

Groundwater is an increasingly important water supply source globally. Understanding the amount of groundwater used versus the volume available is crucial to evaluate future water availability. We present a groundwater stress assessment to quantify the relationship between groundwater use and availa...

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Autores principales: Richey, Alexandra S., Thomas, Brian F., Lo, Min‐Hui, Reager, John T., Famiglietti, James S., Voss, Katalyn, Swenson, Sean, Rodell, Matthew
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4744761/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26900185
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2015WR017349
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author Richey, Alexandra S.
Thomas, Brian F.
Lo, Min‐Hui
Reager, John T.
Famiglietti, James S.
Voss, Katalyn
Swenson, Sean
Rodell, Matthew
author_facet Richey, Alexandra S.
Thomas, Brian F.
Lo, Min‐Hui
Reager, John T.
Famiglietti, James S.
Voss, Katalyn
Swenson, Sean
Rodell, Matthew
author_sort Richey, Alexandra S.
collection PubMed
description Groundwater is an increasingly important water supply source globally. Understanding the amount of groundwater used versus the volume available is crucial to evaluate future water availability. We present a groundwater stress assessment to quantify the relationship between groundwater use and availability in the world's 37 largest aquifer systems. We quantify stress according to a ratio of groundwater use to availability, which we call the Renewable Groundwater Stress ratio. The impact of quantifying groundwater use based on nationally reported groundwater withdrawal statistics is compared to a novel approach to quantify use based on remote sensing observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission. Four characteristic stress regimes are defined: Overstressed, Variable Stress, Human‐dominated Stress, and Unstressed. The regimes are a function of the sign of use (positive or negative) and the sign of groundwater availability, defined as mean annual recharge. The ability to mitigate and adapt to stressed conditions, where use exceeds sustainable water availability, is a function of economic capacity and land use patterns. Therefore, we qualitatively explore the relationship between stress and anthropogenic biomes. We find that estimates of groundwater stress based on withdrawal statistics are unable to capture the range of characteristic stress regimes, especially in regions dominated by sparsely populated biome types with limited cropland. GRACE‐based estimates of use and stress can holistically quantify the impact of groundwater use on stress, resulting in both greater magnitudes of stress and more variability of stress between regions.
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spelling pubmed-47447612016-02-18 Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE Richey, Alexandra S. Thomas, Brian F. Lo, Min‐Hui Reager, John T. Famiglietti, James S. Voss, Katalyn Swenson, Sean Rodell, Matthew Water Resour Res Research Articles Groundwater is an increasingly important water supply source globally. Understanding the amount of groundwater used versus the volume available is crucial to evaluate future water availability. We present a groundwater stress assessment to quantify the relationship between groundwater use and availability in the world's 37 largest aquifer systems. We quantify stress according to a ratio of groundwater use to availability, which we call the Renewable Groundwater Stress ratio. The impact of quantifying groundwater use based on nationally reported groundwater withdrawal statistics is compared to a novel approach to quantify use based on remote sensing observations from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission. Four characteristic stress regimes are defined: Overstressed, Variable Stress, Human‐dominated Stress, and Unstressed. The regimes are a function of the sign of use (positive or negative) and the sign of groundwater availability, defined as mean annual recharge. The ability to mitigate and adapt to stressed conditions, where use exceeds sustainable water availability, is a function of economic capacity and land use patterns. Therefore, we qualitatively explore the relationship between stress and anthropogenic biomes. We find that estimates of groundwater stress based on withdrawal statistics are unable to capture the range of characteristic stress regimes, especially in regions dominated by sparsely populated biome types with limited cropland. GRACE‐based estimates of use and stress can holistically quantify the impact of groundwater use on stress, resulting in both greater magnitudes of stress and more variability of stress between regions. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2015-07-14 2015-07 /pmc/articles/PMC4744761/ /pubmed/26900185 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2015WR017349 Text en © 2015 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution‐NonCommercial‐NoDerivs (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non‐commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Richey, Alexandra S.
Thomas, Brian F.
Lo, Min‐Hui
Reager, John T.
Famiglietti, James S.
Voss, Katalyn
Swenson, Sean
Rodell, Matthew
Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE
title Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE
title_full Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE
title_fullStr Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE
title_full_unstemmed Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE
title_short Quantifying renewable groundwater stress with GRACE
title_sort quantifying renewable groundwater stress with grace
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4744761/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26900185
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/2015WR017349
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