Identifying and characterizing groundwater-dependent ecosystems (GDEs) requires an understanding of the feedback processes linking groundwater with aquatic, terrestrial, and subterranean ecosystems. In turn, protecting GDEs and their myriad of ecosystem services requires understanding how these interacting systems have evolved, and will continue to evolve, under global change. This session invites contributions that advance knowledge of the role of groundwater in sustaining ecosystems and their services to capture ecological and hydrogeological feedback, resilience, and socioecological dimensions.
Groundwater is often a crucial source of water that is connected to entire habitats and ecological communities, ranging from wetlands, riparian zones, caves, aquifers, springs, forests, grasslands, and coastal environments. Conversely, ecosystems can significantly influence groundwater dynamics. These interactions involve a diversity of ecological and hydrological processes such as groundwater uptake by vegetation, biogeochemical reactions in aquifers, bioturbation and nutrient recycling by groundwater resident fauna, and soil–plant–atmosphere interactions. As these feedbacks are tightly connected to the land surface, GDEs can be highly sensitive and vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures. Conversely, GDEs can provide important buffering capacities to environmental variability and extremes, and present important forms of Nature-based solutions. Further, GDEs often support human activities, from supporting pastoral livelihoods to underpinning cultural values. Thus, understanding groundwater-ecosystem interactions is not only important for the field of ecohydrogeology, but moreover to inform management policies and strategies that holistically integrate ecological, hydrological, and social outcomes.
The session seeks to include work on GDEs across a wide range of physiographic and social contexts, including surface, unsaturated, and saturated zones; urban, rural, and coastal environments; and a wide range of socioeconomic and sociocultural contexts. Submissions that advance data acquisition methods; local-scale in-situ studies; mapping of GDEs; empirical data analysis; ecohydrogeological model simulations; scaling of processes and their detection from the plant to regional scales; the resilience of GDEs and their connected systems; socioeconomic, cultural interactions, and meanings of GDEs; and analytical developments are equally welcome.