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  • Review Article
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Global water resources and the role of groundwater in a resilient water future

Nature Reviews Earth & Environment volume 4, pages 87–101 (2023)Cite this article

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An Author Correction to this article was published on 29 March 2023

This article has been updated

Abstract

Water is a critical resource, but ensuring its availability faces challenges from climate extremes and human intervention. In this Review, we evaluate the current and historical evolution of water resources, considering surface water and groundwater as a single, interconnected resource. Total water storage trends have varied across regions over the past century. Satellite data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) show declining, stable and rising trends in total water storage over the past two decades in various regions globally. Groundwater monitoring provides longer-term context over the past century, showing rising water storage in northwest India, central Pakistan and the northwest United States, and declining water storage in the US High Plains and Central Valley. Climate variability causes some changes in water storage, but human intervention, particularly irrigation, is a major driver. Water-resource resilience can be increased by diversifying management strategies. These approaches include green solutions, such as forest and wetland preservation, and grey solutions, such as increasing supplies (desalination, wastewater reuse), enhancing storage in surface reservoirs and depleted aquifers, and transporting water. A diverse portfolio of these solutions, in tandem with managing groundwater and surface water as a single resource, can address human and ecosystem needs while building a resilient water system.

Key points

  • Net trends in total water storage data from the GRACE satellite mission range from −310 km3 to 260 km3 total over a 19-year record in different regions globally, caused by climate and human intervention.

  • Groundwater and surface water are strongly linked, with 85% of groundwater withdrawals sourced from surface water capture and reduced evapotranspiration, and the remaining 15% derived from aquifer depletion.

  • Climate and human interventions caused loss of ~90,000 km2 of surface water area between 1984 and 2015, while 184,000 km2 of new surface water area developed elsewhere, primarily through filling reservoirs.

  • Human intervention affects water resources directly through water use, particularly irrigation, and indirectly through land-use change, such as agricultural expansion and urbanization.

  • Strategies for increasing water-resource resilience include preserving and restoring forests and wetlands, and conjunctive surface water and groundwater management.

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Fig. 1: The water cycle.
Fig. 2: GRACE satellite total water storage trends.
Fig. 3: Aquifer dynamics in response to development.
Fig. 4: Modelled global and regional groundwater storage over time.
Fig. 5: Relationship between agricultural development and groundwater depth.
Fig. 6: Global virtual water flows linked to food trade.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    Bridget R. Scanlon, Sarah Fakhreddine, Ashraf Rateb, Robert C. Reedy & Alex Sun

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Sarah Fakhreddine

  3. Water Systems and Global Change, Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands

    Inge de Graaf

  4. Global Institute for Water Security, National Hydrology Research Center, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada

    Jay Famiglietti

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

    Tom Gleeson

  6. Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia

    R. Quentin Grafton

  7. Grupo de Estudios Ambientales, IMASL, CONICET, Universidad Nacional de San Luis, San Luis, Argentina

    Esteban Jobbagy

  8. Center for Water Resources Research, School of Agricultural, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of KwaZulu Natal, Durban, South Africa

    Seifu Kebede

  9. UK Meteorological Office, Exeter, UK

    Seshagiri Rao Kolusu

  10. Leonard Konikow Hydrogeologist, Reston, VA, USA

    Leonard F. Konikow

  11. Department of Hydraulic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Di Long

  12. Department of Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, AL, USA

    Mesfin Mekonnen

  13. Institute of Physical Geography, Goethe University Frankfurt, Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany

    Hannes Müller Schmied

  14. Senckenberg Leibniz Biodiversity and Climate Research Centre (SBiK-F), Frankfurt am Main, Frankfurt, Germany

    Hannes Müller Schmied

  15. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, India

    Abhijit Mukherjee

  16. British Geological Survey, Lyell Centre, Edinburgh, UK

    Alan MacDonald

  17. Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction, University College London, London, UK

    Mohammad Shamsudduha

  18. National Centre for Groundwater Research and Training (NCGRT), College of Science and Engineering, Flinders University, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Craig T. Simmons

  19. Department of Geography, University College London, London, UK

    Richard G. Taylor

  20. Water Cycle Innovation Ltd, Johannesburg, Gauten, South Africa

    Karen G. Villholth

  21. Environmental Sciences Initiative, Advanced Science Research Center at the CUNY Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA

    Charles J. Vörösmarty

  22. School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    Chunmiao Zheng

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  1. Bridget R. Scanlon
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Contributions

B.R.S. conceptualized the review and coordinated input. S.F. reviewed many of the topics and developed some of the figures. A.R. analysed GRACE satellite data and M.S. reviewed this output. Q.G. provided input on water economics. E.J. reviewed impacts of land-use change. S.R.K. provided data on future precipitation changes. L.F.K. provided detailed information on surface water/groundwater interactions. M.M. provided data on water trade. C.J.V. provided input on green and grey solutions. All authors reviewed the paper and provided edits.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bridget R. Scanlon.

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Nature Reviews Earth & Environment thanks Helen Dahlke, Diana Allen, who co-reviewed with Aspen Anderson, and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Scanlon, B.R., Fakhreddine, S., Rateb, A. et al. Global water resources and the role of groundwater in a resilient water future. Nat Rev Earth Environ 4, 87–101 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43017-022-00378-6

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