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. 2017 Oct 10;7(1):12910.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-017-12877-4.

Quantifying Anthropogenic Stress on Groundwater Resources

Batool Ashraf  1   2 , Amir AghaKouchak  3 , Amin Alizadeh  2 , Mohammad Mousavi Baygi  2 , Hamed R Moftakhari  1 , Ali Mirchi  4 , Hassan Anjileli  1 , Kaveh Madani  5   6
Affiliations

Quantifying Anthropogenic Stress on Groundwater Resources

Batool Ashraf et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

This study explores a general framework for quantifying anthropogenic influences on groundwater budget based on normalized human outflow (hout) and inflow (hin). The framework is useful for sustainability assessment of groundwater systems and allows investigating the effects of different human water abstraction scenarios on the overall aquifer regime (e.g., depleted, natural flow-dominated, and human flow-dominated). We apply this approach to selected regions in the USA, Germany and Iran to evaluate the current aquifer regime. We subsequently present two scenarios of changes in human water withdrawals and return flow to the system (individually and combined). Results show that approximately one-third of the selected aquifers in the USA, and half of the selected aquifers in Iran are dominated by human activities, while the selected aquifers in Germany are natural flow-dominated. The scenario analysis results also show that reduced human withdrawals could help with regime change in some aquifers. For instance, in two of the selected USA aquifers, a decrease in anthropogenic influences by ~20% may change the condition of depleted regime to natural flow-dominated regime. We specifically highlight a trending threat to the sustainability of groundwater in northwest Iran and California, and the need for more careful assessment and monitoring practices as well as strict regulations to mitigate the negative impacts of groundwater overexploitation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Location of study areas in (A) the world (B) the Germany, (C) the USA and (D) the Iran.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Schematic view of the (A) methodology 29,34, (B) a system with natural-dominated flow and groundwater storage, and (C) a highly developed area with depleted groundwater resources (This figure is created by Jennie Brewton/UCI).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Annual water use regimes (A–D) and groundwater overdraft ratio (Hout/RT) (E–H) for selected areas. The color bars are chosen such that they represent the aquifers’ regime type as shown in the left panels (A–D).
Figure 4
Figure 4
Uncertainty analysis of water use regimes. Error bars show 95% confidence intervals for resulting estimates of hout and hin for some sample aquifers in Fig. 3A–D.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Shifts in annual water use regimes according to two scenarios for two depleted aquifers in USA.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Shifts in annual water use regimes according to two scenarios for four depleted areas in Lake Urmia and Karkheh River Basins, Iran.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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