Quantifying groundwater’s contribution to regional environmental flows in diverse hydrologic landscapes (data)

Growing recognition of the importance of ecosystem services to the development and management of water resources has spurred the development and application of environmental flows requirements. Despite the importance of groundwater in maintaining the freshwater ecosystem, groundwater is seldom taken into consideration in environmental flows allocation and management. In this study we develop two methods for estimating groundwater contribution to environmental flows: 1) a groundwater-centric method and 2) a surface water-centric method. The two methods are demonstrated using the western province of Canada, British Columbia as a case study. The framework presented in this study can be implemented across different spatial and temporal scales for different regions and globally, in data-scarce, hydrologically complex landscapes. The application of these methods can aid in a robust and holistic assessment of environmental flows, taking into account the often missing groundwater component.