The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Global depletion of groundwater resources
Open accessAbstract
In regions with frequent water stress and large aquifer systems groundwater is often used as an additional water source. If groundwater abstraction exceeds the natural groundwater recharge for extensive areas and long times, overexploitation or persistent groundwater depletion occurs. Here we provide a global overview of groundwater depletion (here defined as abstraction in excess of recharge) by assessing groundwater recharge with a global hydrological model and subtracting estimates of groundwater abstraction. Restricting our analysis to sub‐humid to arid areas we estimate the total global groundwater depletion to have increased from 126 (±32) km 3 a−1 in 1960 to 283 (±40) km 3 a−1 in 2000. The latter equals 39 (±10)% of the global yearly groundwater abstraction, 2 (±0.6)% of the global yearly groundwater recharge, 0.8 (±0.1)% of the global yearly continental runoff and 0.4 (±0.06)% of the global yearly evaporation, contributing a considerable amount of 0.8 (±0.1) mm a−1 to current sea‐level rise.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Options for keeping the food system within environmental limits
Springmann, M., Clark, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Wiebe, K., Bodirsky, B. L., Lassaletta, L., de Vries, W., Vermeulen, S. J., Herrero, M., Carlson, K. M., et al. (2018) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-018-0594-0 · Cited by 3,380
Importance and vulnerability of the world’s water towers
Immerzeel, W. W., Lutz, A. F., Andrade, M., Bahl, A., Biemans, H., Bolch, T., Hyde, S., Brumby, S., Davies, B. J., Elmore, A. C., et al. (2020) · Nature · doi:10.1038/s41586-019-1822-y · Cited by 2,105
Self-citationWater balance of global aquifers revealed by groundwater footprint
Gleeson, T., Wada, Y., Bierkens, M. F. P., & van Beek, L. P. H. (2012) · Nature · doi:10.1038/nature11295 · Cited by 1,677
Self-citationGlobal Patterns of Groundwater Table Depth
Fan, Y., Li, H., & Miguez-Macho, G. (2013) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1229881 · Cited by 1,312
The Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project (ISI–MIP): Project framework
Warszawski, L., Frieler, K., Huber, V., Piontek, F., Serdeczny, O., & Schewe, J. (2014) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1312330110 · Cited by 1,253
Metadata
- Authors
- Wada, Y., van Beek, L. P. H., van Kempen, C. M., Reckman, J. W. T. M., Vasak, S., & Bierkens, M. F. P.
- Venue
- Geophysical Research Letters
- Publisher
- American Geophysical Union (AGU)
- Published
- 2010-10
- Volume
- 37
- Issue
- 20
- ISSN
- 0094-8276 (ISSN-L)
- 1944-8007
- OpenAlex
- W2106371033
- Cited by
- 2,091
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 34.50
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Global depletion of groundwater resources. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1029/2010gl044571
- The paper
- Wada, Y., van Beek, L. P. H., van Kempen, C. M., Reckman, J. W. T. M., Vasak, S., & Bierkens, M. F. P. (2010). Global depletion of groundwater resources. Geophysical Research Letters. https://doi.org/10.1029/2010gl044571
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
