Global Geo-processed Data of Aquifer Properties by 0.5° Grid, Country and Water Basins

This repository contains 0.5° scale global hydrogeologic datasets, including depth to groundwater (Fan et al., 2013), aquifer thickness (de Graaf et al., 2015), WHYMap aquifer classes (Richts et al., 2011), porosity and permeability (Gleeson et al., 2014), digitized and geo-processed from their respective sources. 

Globally gridded aquifer properties could be used independently to estimate global groundwater availability or used as critical inputs to the superwell model to simulate groundwater extraction and provide estimates of pumped volumes and unit costs under user-specific scenarios. Key resources related to this data are: 

Niazi, H., Ferencz, S., Graham, N., Yoon, J., Wild, T., Hejazi, M., Watson, D., & Vernon, C. (2024; In-prep). Long-term Hydro-economic Assessment Tool for Evaluating Global Groundwater Cost and Supply: Superwell v1. Geoscientific Model Development.

superwell model repository which uses this data to simulate groundwater extraction and provides estimates of the global extractable volumes and unit-costs ($/km3) of accessible groundwater production under user-specified extraction scenarios. 

Repository Overview

Main output: aquifer_properties.csv contains all processed outputs, including aquifer properties like porosity, permeability, aquifer thickness, and depth to groundwater.

shapefiles.zip: contains all digitized GIS databases and shapefile for all aquifer properties 

prep_inputs.R: R script that processes the shapefiles to produce the aquifer_properties file

plot_inputs.R: R script for plotting the maps and conducting preliminary analysis on the available groundwater volume

basin_country_region_mapping.csv and continent_county_mapping.csv provide the mapping between continents, 32 energy-economic macro regions, countries, and water basins for post-processing aquifer_properties.csv

Maps: Each map visualizes the spatial distribution of one of the aquifer properties across the globe

map_in_Porosity.png

map_in_Permeability.png

map_in_Aquifer_thickness.png

map_in_Depth_to_water.png

map_in_Grid_area_km.png

map_in_WHYClass.png

Sample inputs 

sample_inputs.py: this script samples inputs from the aquifer_properties dataset, ensuring the sampled and original inputs maintain the same distributions

sampled_data_100.csv contains 100 sampled data points and sampled_data_100.png compares their distributions 

Dataset Overview

The main outputs are consolidated in a comprehensive aquifer_properties.csv file and include the following fields:

GridCellID: Unique identifier for each (roughly 0.5°) grid cell

Continent: Continent name

Country: Country name

GCAM_basin_ID: Identifier for GCAM hydrologic basin

Basin_long_name: Full name of the basin

WHYClass: Hydrogeologic classification based on WHYMap aquifer classes (Richts et al., 2011)

Porosity: Soil porosity (%) (Gleeson et al., 2014)

Permeability: Soil permeability (in square meters; Gleeson et al., 2014) 

Aquifer_thickness: Thickness of the aquifer (in meters; de Graaf et al., 2015)

Depth_to_water: Depth to groundwater (in meters; Fan et al., 2013)

Grid_area: Area of the grid cell (in square meters) 

Key References

The datasets are digitized versions of global hydrogeologic properties from the following key literature sources:

Depth to Groundwater: Fan, Y., Li, H., & Miguez-Macho, G. (2013). Global Patterns of Groundwater Table Depth. Science, 339(6122), 940-943. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1229881 

Aquifer Thickness: de Graaf, I. E. M., Sutanudjaja, E. H., van Beek, L. P. H., & Bierkens, M. F. P. (2015). A high-resolution global-scale groundwater model. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci., 19(2), 823-837. https://doi.org/10.5194/hess-19-823-2015 

Porosity and Permeability: Gleeson, T., Moosdorf, N., Hartmann, J., & van Beek, L. P. H. (2014). A glimpse beneath earth's surface: GLobal HYdrogeology MaPS (GLHYMPS) of permeability and porosity. Geophysical Research Letters, 41(11), 3891-3898. https://doi.org/10.1002/2014GL059856 

Aquifer classes: Richts, A., Struckmeier, W. F., & Zaepke, M. (2011). WHYMAP and the Groundwater Resources Map of the World 1:25,000,000. In J. A. A. Jones (Ed.), Sustaining Groundwater Resources: A Critical Element in the Global Water Crisis (pp. 159-173). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3426-7_10 

Cite as

Niazi, H., Watson, D., Hejazi, M., Yonkofski, C., Ferencz, S., Vernon, C., Graham, N., Wild, T., & Yoon, J. (2024). Global Geo-processed Data of Aquifer Properties by 0.5° Grid, Country and Water Basins. MSD-LIVE Data repository. https://doi.org/10.57931/2307831

Contact 

Reach out to Hassan Niazi or open an issue in superwell repository for questions or suggestions.