Data from: Overlooked risks and opportunities in groundwatersheds of the world’s protected areas

This repository consists of: 1. A GeoTIFF (.tif) of groundwater-dependent ecosystem (GDE) types at 30 arcsecond resolution, globally 2. A GeoTIFF (.tif) of groundwatershed extents for GDEs within protected areas, derived globally at 30 arcsecond resolution 3. A GeoPackage (.gpkg) containing vector polygons of all contiguous protected areas included in the study with key summary statistics provided in the attribute data 4. An archive of the scripts used to perform all analysis, also located at the GitHub repository: https://github.com/XanderHuggins/groundwatersheds-for-PAs 5. A ReadMe file Associated paper's abstract: Protected areas are a key tool for conserving biodiversity, sustaining ecosystem services and improving human well-being. Global initiatives that aim to expand and connect protected areas generally focus on controlling ‘above ground’ impacts such as land use, overlooking the potential for human actions in adjacent areas to affect protected areas through groundwater flow. Here, we assess the potential footprint of these impacts by mapping groundwatersheds for the world’s protected areas. We find that 85% of protected areas with groundwater-dependent ecosystems have groundwatersheds that are underprotected, meaning that some portion of the groundwatershed lies outside of the protected area. Half of all protected areas have a groundwatershed with a spatial footprint that lies mostly (i.e., at least 50%) outside of the protected area’s boundary. These findings highlight a widespread potential risk to protected areas from activities affecting groundwater outside protected areas, underscoring the need for groundwatershed-based conservation and management measures. Delineating groundwatersheds can catalyze needed discussions about protected area connectivity and robustness, and groundwatershed conservation and management can help protect groundwater-dependent ecosystems from external threats.

本仓库包含以下内容：
1. 全球尺度30弧秒分辨率的依赖地下水的生态系统（groundwater-dependent ecosystem, GDE）类型GeoTIFF（.tif）文件
2. 以30弧秒分辨率全球范围生成的、保护区内依赖地下水的生态系统对应的地下水流域范围GeoTIFF（.tif）文件
3. 一个GeoPackage（.gpkg）文件，内含本研究纳入的所有连片保护区的矢量多边形，属性数据中附带关键汇总统计信息
4. 用于执行全部分析的脚本归档文件，同样存放于该GitHub仓库：https://github.com/XanderHuggins/groundwatersheds-for-PAs
5. 一份README文件

相关论文摘要如下：
保护区是保护生物多样性、维持生态系统服务功能及改善人类福祉的关键手段。当前旨在扩大并连通保护区的全球倡议，通常聚焦于管控“地表”层面的人类活动影响（如土地利用），却忽视了邻近区域的人类活动可通过地下水流动对保护区造成间接影响的潜在可能。本研究通过绘制全球范围内保护区的地下水流域，评估了这类影响的潜在波及范围。研究发现，在存在依赖地下水的生态系统的保护区中，85%的保护区对应的地下水流域存在保护不足的问题——即该地下水流域的部分区域位于保护区边界之外。在所有保护区中，有半数其地下水流域的空间范围有至少50%位于保护区边界之外。上述研究结果凸显了保护区正面临来自其外部影响地下水的活动的广泛潜在风险，同时强调了基于地下水流域开展保护与管理措施的必要性。划定地下水流域可为保护区连通性与韧性相关的必要讨论提供支撑，而地下水流域的保护与管理则有助于保护依赖地下水的生态系统免受外部威胁。