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Wetlands such as bogs, swamps, or freshwater marshes are hotspots of biodiversity. For 5.1 million km2 of inland wetlands, the dynamics of area and water storage, which strongly impact biodiversity and ecosystem services, were simulated using the global hydrological model WaterGAP. For the first time, the impacts of both human water use and man‐made reservoirs (WUR) and future climate change (CC) on wetlands around the globe were quantified. WUR impacts are concentrated in arid/semiarid regions, where WUR decreased mean wetland water storage by more than 5% on 8.2% of the mean wetland area during 1986–2005 (Am), with highest decreases in groundwater depletion area. Using output of three climate models, CC impacts on wetlands were quantified, distinguishing unavoidable impacts [i.e., at 2 °C global warming (GW)] from avoidable impacts (difference between 3 °C and 2 °C impacts). Even unavoidable CC impacts are projected to be much larger than WUR impacts, also in arid/semiarid regions. On most wetland area with reliable estimates, avoidable CC impacts are more than twice as large as unavoidable impacts. In case of 2 °C GW, half of Am is estimated to be unaffected by mean storage changes of more than 5%, but only one third in case of 3 °C GW. Temporal variability of water storage will increase for most wetlands. Wetlands in dry regions will be affected the most, particularly by water storage decreases in the dry season. Different from wealthier countries, low‐income countries will dominantly suffer from a decrease in wetland water storage due to CC.
Groundwater is the largest source of accessible freshwater with its dynamics having significantly changed due to human withdrawals, and being projected to continue to as a result of climate change. The pumping of groundwater has led to lowered water tables, decreased base flow, and depletion.
Global hydrological models (GHMs) are used to simulate the global freshwater cycle, assessing impacts of changes in climate and human freshwater use. Currently, groundwater is commonly represented by a bucket-like linear storage component in these models. Bucket models, however, cannot provide information on the location of the groundwater table. Due to this limitation, they can only simulate groundwater discharge to surface water bodies but not recharge from surface water to groundwater and calculate no lateral and vertical groundwater flow whatsoever among grid cells. For instance this may lead to an underestimation of groundwater resources in semiarid areas, where groundwater is often replenished by surface water. In order to overcome these limitations it is necessary to replace the linear groundwater model in GHMs with a hydraulic head gradient-based groundwater flow model
This thesis presents the newly developed global groundwater model G3M and its coupling to the GHM WaterGAP spanning over 70,000 lines of newly developed code. Development and validation of the modeling software are discussed along with numerical challenges. Based on the newly developed software, a global natural equilibrium groundwater model is presented showing better agreements with observations than previous models. Groundwater discharge to rivers is found to be the most dominant flow component globally, compared to flows to other surface water bodies and lateral flows. Furthermore, first global maps of the distribution of gaining and losing surface water bodies are displayed.
For the purpose of determining the uncertainty in model outcomes a sensitivity study is conducted with an innovative approach through applying a global sensitivity analysis for a computationally complex model. First global maps of spatially distributed parameter sensitivities are presented. The results at hand indicate that globally simulated hydraulic heads are equally sensitive to hydraulic conductivity, groundwater recharge and surface water body elevation, even though parameter sensitivities do vary regionally.
A high resolution model of New Zealand is developed to further understand the involved uncertainties connected to the spatial resolution of the global model. This thesis finds that a new understanding is necessary how these models can be evaluated and that a simple increase in spatial resolution is not improving the model performance when compared to observations.
Alongside the assessment of the natural equilibrium, the concept of a fully coupled transient model as integrated storage component replacing the former model in the hydrological model WaterGAP is discussed. First results reveal that the model shows reasonable response to seasonal variability although it contains persistent head trends leading to global overestimates of water table depth due to an incomplete coupling. Nonetheless, WaterGAP-G3M is already able to show plausible long term storage trends for areas that are known to be affected by groundwater depletion. In comparison with two established regional models in the Central Valley the coupled model shows a highly promising simulation of storage declines.