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

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer review

Authors

  • Anna Schlattmann
  • Felix Neuendorf
  • Kremena Burkhard
  • Elisabeth Probst
  • Estanislao Pujades
  • Wolfram Mauser
  • Sabine Attinger
  • Christina von Haaren

Research Organisations

External Research Organisations

  • Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)
  • Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health
View graph of relations

Details

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)329-349
Number of pages21
JournalEnvironmental management
Volume70
Issue number2
Early online date14 Jun 2022
Publication statusPublished - Aug 2022

Abstract

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.

Keywords

    Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services, GIS, SDGs, Sustainability assessment, Water distribution

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Sustainable Development Goals

Cite this

Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water Distribution for the Maintenance of Ecosystems, their Services and Biodiversity. / Schlattmann, Anna; Neuendorf, Felix; Burkhard, Kremena et al.
In: Environmental management, Vol. 70, No. 2, 08.2022, p. 329-349.

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer review

Schlattmann A, Neuendorf F, Burkhard K, Probst E, Pujades E, Mauser W et al. Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water Distribution for the Maintenance of Ecosystems, their Services and Biodiversity. Environmental management. 2022 Aug;70(2):329-349. Epub 2022 Jun 14. doi: 10.1007/s00267-022-01662-3
Download
@article{e8ed3ab739c44d3c9a7e7de5e222716b,
title = "Ecological Sustainability Assessment of Water Distribution for the Maintenance of Ecosystems, their Services and Biodiversity",
abstract = "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.",
keywords = "Biodiversity, Ecosystem Services, GIS, SDGs, Sustainability assessment, Water distribution",
author = "Anna Schlattmann and Felix Neuendorf and Kremena Burkhard and Elisabeth Probst and Estanislao Pujades and Wolfram Mauser and Sabine Attinger and {von Haaren}, Christina",
note = "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 J{\"u}rgen B{\"o}ttcher 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.",
year = "2022",
month = aug,
doi = "10.1007/s00267-022-01662-3",
language = "English",
volume = "70",
pages = "329--349",
journal = "Environmental management",
issn = "0364-152X",
publisher = "Springer New York",
number = "2",

}

Download

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 -

By the same author(s)