Quantification of the ecosystem services stormwater retention capacity and groundwater quality in urban environments

Anneke Döring, Insa Neuweiler und das metapolis-Team

Project: metapolis (www.metapolis.tu-bs.de)
Sub-project: ESS.H2O

As the majority of fresh water worldwide is stored underground, groundwater ecosystems play a vital role in the global hydrological cycle. Most of the aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems depend on the amount and quality of groundwater available locally.

According to the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005), ecosystem services are benefits people obtain from ecosystems. Regarding groundwater ecosystems these services are for instance: provision of clean drinking water, flood and erosion protection, as well as irrigation.

This project is part of the inter- and transdisciplinary project metapolis. Within metapolis different scenarios of urban development will be generated. Groundwater recharge and quality are closely linked to surface sealing; therefore, stormwater retention and groundwater quality under changing sealing rates and evolving urban structures are analyzed.

In order to quantify the water fluxes: surface runoff, infiltration and groundwater recharge, raster-based spatial storage balance models and hydrological-hydraulic models (e.g. SWMM) are applied. Models are run for different scenarios of urban development. Afterwards quantity and quality of water fluxes under changing urban structures are compared.