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

authored by

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

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.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Environmental Planning

External Organisation(s)

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU)
Helmholtz Zentrum München - German Research Center for Environmental Health

Type

Article

Journal

Environmental management

Volume

70

Pages

329-349

No. of pages

21

ISSN

0364-152X

Publication date

08.2022

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Global and Planetary Change, Ecology, Pollution

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy, SDG 15 - Life on Land

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-022-01662-3 (Access: Open)