Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Analysis
  • Published:

Overlooked risks and opportunities in groundwatersheds of the world’s protected areas

Nature Sustainability volume 6, pages 855–864 (2023)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Protected areas are a key tool for conserving biodiversity, sustaining ecosystem services and improving human well-being. Global initiatives that aim to expand and connect protected areas generally focus on controlling ‘above ground’ impacts such as land use, overlooking the potential for human actions in adjacent areas to affect protected areas through groundwater flow. Here we assess the potential extent of these impacts by mapping the groundwatersheds of the world’s protected areas. We find that 85% of protected areas with groundwater-dependent ecosystems have groundwatersheds that are underprotected, meaning that some portion of the groundwatershed lies outside of the protected area. Half of all protected areas have a groundwatershed with a spatial extent that lies mostly (at least 50%) outside of the protected area’s boundary. These findings highlight a widespread potential risk to protected areas from activities affecting groundwater outside protected areas, underscoring the need for groundwatershed-based conservation and management measures. Delineating groundwatersheds can catalyse needed discussions about protected area connectivity and robustness, and groundwatershed conservation and management can help protect groundwater-dependent ecosystems from external threats.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: GDEs and protected areas.
Fig. 2: Overview of groundwatersheds and our application of groundwatersheds in this study.
Fig. 3: Mapping the groundwatersheds of the world’s protected areas.
Fig. 4: Implications of groundwatersheds for conservation initiatives.

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

This study uses data from multiple open-access datasets. Source data are documented in Supplementary Table 1 and can be downloaded from the persistent web-links provided. Data produced in this study, including the GDE map, groundwatershed extents and protected area metrics have been deposited on Borealis, the Canadian Dataverse Repository (https://doi.org/10.5683/SP3/P3OU3A).

Code availability

Code used to produce all results in this study is available at https://github.com/XanderHuggins/groundwatersheds-for-PAs. All analyses were conducted using the R project for statistical computing44. R packages necessary for analysis and visualization include: terra45, gdalUtilities46, rasterDT47, whitebox48, tmap49, rnaturalearth50, ggplot251, scico52,53 and MetBrewer54. Composite figures were assembled in Affinity Designer (https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/).

References

  1. Gray, N. J., Gruby, R. L. & Campbell, L. M. Boundary objects and global consensus: scalar narratives of marine conservation in the Convention on Biological Diversity. Glob. Environ. Polit. 14, 64–83 (2014).

    Google Scholar 

  2. Jones, K. R. et al. One-third of global protected land is under intense human pressure. Science 360, 788–791 (2018).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  3. Protected Areas in Today’s World: Their Values and Benefits for the Welfare of the Planet CBD Technical Series No. 36 (Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2014).

  4. Possingham, H., Wilson, K., Andelman, S. A. & Vynne, C. H. in Principles of Conservation Biology (eds Groom, M. J. et al.) 507–549 (Sinauer Associates, 2006).

  5. Belote, R. T. et al. Wild, connected, and diverse: building a more resilient system of protected areas. Ecol. Appl. 27, 1050–1056 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  6. Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (Convention of Biological Diversity, 2022).

  7. Davidson, N. C. in The Wetland Book: I: Structure and Function, Management and Methods (eds Finlayson, C. M. et al.) 3–14 (Springer, 2018).

  8. Tickner, D. et al. Bending the curve of global freshwater biodiversity loss: an emergency recovery plan. BioScience 70, 330–342 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  9. Acreman, M., Hughes, K. A., Arthington, A. H., Tickner, D. & Dueñas, M.-A. Protected areas and freshwater biodiversity: a novel systematic review distils eight lessons for effective conservation. Conserv. Lett. 13, e12684 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  10. Abell, R., Lehner, B., Thieme, M. & Linke, S. Looking beyond the fenceline: assessing protection gaps for the world’s rivers. Conserv. Lett. 10, 384–394 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  11. Geldmann, J. et al. Essential indicators for measuring site-based conservation effectiveness in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. Conserv. Lett. 14, e12792 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  12. Suso, J. & Llamas, M. R. Influence of groundwater development on the Doñana National Park ecosystems (Spain). J. Hydrol. 141, 239–269 (1993).

    Google Scholar 

  13. Camacho, C. et al. Groundwater extraction poses extreme threat to Doñana World Heritage Site. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 6, 654–655 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  14. Mueller, J. M., Lima, R. E. & Springer, A. E. Can environmental attributes influence protected area designation? A case study valuing preferences for springs in Grand Canyon National Park. Land Use Policy 63, 196–205 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  15. Hansen, M. C. et al. High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science 342, 850–853 (2013).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  16. Maxwell, R. M. & Condon, L. E. Connections between groundwater flow and transpiration partitioning. Science 353, 377–380 (2016).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  17. Zipper, S. C., Soylu, M. E., Kucharik, C. J. & Loheide, S. P. II Quantifying indirect groundwater-mediated effects of urbanization on agroecosystem productivity using MODFLOW-AgroIBIS (MAGI), a complete critical zone model. Ecol. Model. 359, 201–219 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  18. Zipper, S. C. et al. Continuous separation of land use and climate effects on the past and future water balance. J. Hydrol. 565, 106–122 (2018).

    Google Scholar 

  19. Kustu, M. D., Fan, Y. & Robock, A. Large-scale water cycle perturbation due to irrigation pumping in the US High Plains: a synthesis of observed streamflow changes. J. Hydrol. 390, 222–244 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  20. de Graaf, I. E. M., Gleeson, T., (Rens) van Beek, L. P. H., Sutanudjaja, E. H. & Bierkens, M. F. P. Environmental flow limits to global groundwater pumping. Nature 574, 90–94 (2019).

  21. Wondzell, S. M. Groundwater–surface-water interactions: perspectives on the development of the science over the last 20 years. Freshw. Sci. 34, 368–376 (2015).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Martin, S. L., Hayes, D. B., Kendall, A. D. & Hyndman, D. W. The land-use legacy effect: towards a mechanistic understanding of time-lagged water quality responses to land use/cover. Sci. Total Environ. 579, 1794–1803 (2017).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  23. Gleeson, T. & Manning, A. H. Regional groundwater flow in mountainous terrain: three-dimensional simulations of topographic and hydrogeologic controls. Water Resour. Res. 44, W10403 (2008).

  24. Liu, Y., Wagener, T., Beck, H. E. & Hartmann, A. What is the hydrologically effective area of a catchment? Environ. Res. Lett. 15, 104024 (2020).

    Google Scholar 

  25. Cuthbert, M. O. et al. Global patterns and dynamics of climate–groundwater interactions. Nat. Clim. Change 9, 137–141 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  26. Burns, E. R. et al. Thermal effect of climate change on groundwater-fed ecosystems. Water Resour. Res. 53, 3341–3351 (2017).

    Google Scholar 

  27. Brown, J., Bach, L., Aldous, A., Wyers, A. & DeGagné, J. Groundwater-dependent ecosystems in Oregon: an assessment of their distribution and associated threats. Front. Ecol. Environ. 9, 97–102 (2011).

    Google Scholar 

  28. Zipper, S. C. et al. Quantifying streamflow depletion from groundwater pumping: a practical review of past and emerging approaches for water management. J. Am. Water Resour. Assoc. 58, 289–312 (2022).

    Google Scholar 

  29. Kennedy, C. M., Oakleaf, J. R., Theobald, D. M., Baruch-Mordo, S. & Kiesecker, J. Managing the middle: a shift in conservation priorities based on the global human modification gradient. Glob. Change Biol. 25, 811–826 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  30. Meyfroidt, P. et al. Ten facts about land systems for sustainability. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 119, e2109217118 (2022).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  31. Higgins, J. et al. Durable freshwater protection: a framework for establishing and maintaining long-term protection for freshwater ecosystems and the values they sustain. Sustainability 13, 1950 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  32. Schouten, M. G. Conservation and Restoration of Raised Bogs: Geological, Hydrological, and Ecological Studies (The Government Stationary Office, 2002).

  33. O’Callaghan, J. F. & Mark, D. M. The extraction of drainage networks from digital elevation data. Comput. Vis. Graph. Image Process. 28, 323–344 (1984).

    Google Scholar 

  34. Fan, Y., Miguez-Macho, G., Jobbágy, E. G., Jackson, R. B. & Otero-Casal, C. Hydrologic regulation of plant rooting depth. Proc. Natl Acad. Sci. USA 114, 10572–10577 (2017).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  35. Eamus, D. et al. A functional methodology for determining the groundwater regime needed to maintain the health of groundwater-dependent vegetation. Aust. J. Bot. 54, 97–114 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  36. Tootchi, A., Jost, A. & Ducharne, A. Multi-source global wetland maps combining surface water imagery and groundwater constraints. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 11, 189–220 (2019).

    Google Scholar 

  37. Messager, M. L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I. & Schmitt, O. Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a geo-statistical approach. Nat. Commun. 7, 13603 (2016).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  38. Messager, M. L. et al. Global prevalence of non-perennial rivers and streams. Nature 594, 391–397 (2021).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  39. Shanafield, M., Bourke, S. A., Zimmer, M. A. & Costigan, K. H. An overview of the hydrology of non-perennial rivers and streams. WIREs Water 8, e1504 (2021).

    Google Scholar 

  40. Protected Planet: The World Database on Protected Areas and World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (UNEP-WCMC and IUCN, accessed 7 June 2021); www.protectedplanet.net

  41. Wilson, J. P., Lam, C. S. & Deng, Y. Comparison of the performance of flow-routing algorithms used in GIS-based hydrologic analysis. Hydrol. Process. 21, 1026–1044 (2007).

    Google Scholar 

  42. Rahman, M. M., Arya, D. S. & Goel, N. K. Limitation of 90 m SRTM DEM in drainage network delineation using D8 method—a case study in flat terrain of Bangladesh. Appl. Geomat. 2, 49–58 (2010).

    Google Scholar 

  43. Lindsay, J. B. Whitebox GAT: A case study in geomorphometric analysis. Comput. Geosci. 95, 75–84 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  44. R: A Language and Environment for Statistical Computing. Version 4.2.0 (R Core Team, 2023).

  45. Hijmans, R. J. et al. terra: Spatial Data Analysis. R package version 1.7-3 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=terra (2023).

  46. O’Brien, J. gdalUtilities: Wrappers for “GDAL” Utilities Executables. R package version 0.3.1 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=gdalUtilities (2022).

  47. O’Brien, J. rasterDT: Fast Raster Summary and Manipulation. R package version 1.2.1 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rasterDT (2022).

  48. Wu, Q. & Brown, A. whitebox: ‘WhiteboxTools’ R Frontend. R package version 2.2.0 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=whitebox (2022).

  49. Tennekes, M. tmap: Thematic Maps in R. J. Stat. Softw. 84, 1–39 (2018).

  50. Massicotte, P., South, A. & Hufkens, K. rnaturalearth: World Map Data from Natural Earth. R package version 0.3.2 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rnaturalearth (2023).

  51. Wickham, H. ggplot2: Elegant Graphics for Data Analysis (Springer, 2016).

  52. Pedersen, T. L. & Crameri, F. scico: Colour Palettes Based on the Scientific Colour-Maps. R package version 1.3.1 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=scico (2022).

  53. Crameri, F., Shephard, G. E. & Heron, P. J. The misuse of colour in science communication. Nat. Commun. 11, 5444 (2020).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  54. Mills, B. R. MetBrewer: Color Palettes Inspired by Works at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. R package version 0.2.0 https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=MetBrewer (2022).

  55. Trabucco, A. & Zomer, R. Global Aridity Index and Potential Evapotranspiration (ET0) Climate Database v2. figshare https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.7504448.v3 (2019).

  56. Olson, D. M. et al. Terrestrial Ecoregions of the World: A New Map of Life on Earth: a new global map of terrestrial ecoregions provides an innovative tool for conserving biodiversity. BioScience 51, 933–938 (2001).

    Google Scholar 

  57. Haitjema, H. M. On the residence time distribution in idealized groundwatersheds. J. Hydrol. 172, 127–146 (1995).

    Google Scholar 

  58. Parker, S. J., Butler, A. P. & Jackson, C. R. Seasonal and interannual behaviour of groundwater catchment boundaries in a Chalk aquifer. Hydrol. Process. 30, 3–11 (2016).

    Google Scholar 

  59. Tiedeman, C. R., Goode, D. J. & Hsieh, P. A. Characterizing a ground water basin in a New England mountain and valley terrain. Groundwater 36, 611620 (1998).

    Google Scholar 

  60. Boutt, D. F., Hyndman, D. W., Pijanowski, B. C. & Long, D. T. Identifying potential land use-derived solute sources to stream baseflow using ground water models and GIS. Groundwater 39, 24–34 (2001).

    CAS  Google Scholar 

  61. Winter, T. C., Harvey, J. W., Franke, O. L. & Alley, W. M. Ground water and surface water: A single resource Circular 1139 (US Geological Survey, 1998).

  62. Gleeson, T., Huggins, X., Connor, R., Arrojo-Agudo, P. & Vázquez Suñé, E. in The United Nations World Water Development Report 2022: Groundwater: Making the Invisible Visible 89–100 (UNESCO World Water Assessment Programme, 2022); https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000380721

Download references

Acknowledgements

Figure 2 was produced by the authors with support from L. Bueno and S. Lopez by adapting vector graphics by artists ‘brgxfx’ and ‘freepik’, accessed on the graphic repository Freepik (www.freepik.com); artists T. Saxby, J. Hawkey and J. C. Fisher, accessed on the Integration and Application Network (ian.umces.edu/media-library) under CC BY-SA 4.0; and artist A. Coquet, accessed on The Noun Project (thenounproject.com) under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

X.H. was supported by an Alexander Graham Bell Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. A.H. was supported by the German Research Foundation DFG (HA 8113/1-1).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Xander Huggins, Tom Gleeson & David Serrano

  2. Global Institute for Water Security, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada

    Xander Huggins

  3. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Xander Huggins

  4. School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada

    Tom Gleeson

  5. Kansas Geological Survey, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS, USA

    Sam Zipper

  6. University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany

    Florian Jehn

  7. California Water Program, The Nature Conservancy, Sacramento, CA, USA

    Melissa M. Rohde

  8. SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY, USA

    Melissa M. Rohde

  9. Rohde Environmental Consulting LLC, Seattle, WA, USA

    Melissa M. Rohde

  10. Global Protect, Oceans, Lands and Waters Program, The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA, USA

    Robin Abell

  11. Conservation International, Arlington, VA, USA

    Robin Abell

  12. The Nature Conservancy, Arlington, VA, USA

    Kari Vigerstol

  13. Institute of Groundwater Management, TU Dresden, Dresden, Germany

    Andreas Hartmann

Authors
  1. Xander Huggins
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Tom Gleeson
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. David Serrano
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Sam Zipper
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Florian Jehn
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  6. Melissa M. Rohde
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  7. Robin Abell
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  8. Kari Vigerstol
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  9. Andreas Hartmann
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

The study was conceived by S.Z., T.G. A.H. and F.J. The methods were developed by T.G., X.H., S.Z., A.H., F.J. and D.S. Analysis was performed by X.H. Figures were developed by X.H., T.G. and D.S. Paper writing was led by X.H., T.G. and D.S. with input from all authors. All authors, X.H., T.G., S.Z., D.S., M.M.R., K.V., R.A., A.H. and F.J., discussed the results and edited the paper at multiple stages.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Xander Huggins.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Peer review

Peer review information

Nature Sustainability thanks Arnout van Soesbergen, Anthony Kendall and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

Additional information

Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Texts 1 and 2, Figs. 1–9 and Tables 1–3.

Reporting Summary

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Huggins, X., Gleeson, T., Serrano, D. et al. Overlooked risks and opportunities in groundwatersheds of the world’s protected areas. Nat Sustain 6, 855–864 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01086-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-023-01086-9

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing Anthropocene

Sign up for the Nature Briefing: Anthropocene newsletter — what matters in anthropocene research, free to your inbox weekly.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing: Anthropocene