Coupled freshwater system variations, trends and their drivers around the world

This project aims at significant advances in deciphering and understanding variability and change trends of key water conditions on land, in different parts of the world and over different scales up to global.The research will answer key research questions and test related hypotheses on: (A) how groundwater flow and storage variations and changes relate to those in precipitation, soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and surface water runoff; (B) if space can substitute for time in predicting effects of climate change and/or human land- and water-use developments on integrated freshwater system changes; and if human land- and water-use developments, including groundwater extraction, drive integrated freshwater system changes (C) of similar severity as climate change and (D) beyond possible tipping points to particularly severe/irreversible impacts for societies and ecosystems.The project will synthesize the data and model advances from this research in a new open access resource with two interrelated components: WaterBank - a database resource, and WaterToolkit - an analytics resource.

The central goal of this development is to accelerate research progress and stimulate and bootstrap new investigations with a coherent integrated approach to the world’s freshwater system.As an added value during its operation and as its legacy, the program will also provide essential scientific underpinning for sustainable water resource planning, strategies, policies and management.