PhD Oral Defence: Spatio-temporal changes of groundwater and its management in the Yellow River Basin, China
PhD Oral Defence of Mi Lin, Natural Resource Sciences
The worldwide depletion of aquifers is a striking warning of the need to manage groundwater more sustainably. But groundwater management is dauntingly challenging with limited data and its complex connections to socio-ecological systems. The main goal of my thesis is to develop scientific knowledge about the spatio-temporal changes of groundwater storage and its socio-ecological drivers in order to help foster sustainable management of groundwater resources. I respectively used natural methods (e.g. geostatistics) and social methods (e.g. interviews and focus group discussions) to investigate groundwater’s connection to biophysical and human world. Results showed that groundwater resource was accelerately depleted in the Yellow River Basin from 2003 to 2016, but situations in finer-scale (e.g. provincial) regions may differ. Human activities was the main driver of recent temporal changes of groundwater resource, but the culprit of groundwater depletion may not always be overextraction. Lopsided plans without system thinking may also trigger problems. Recognizing different voices of stakeholders may help to address the problems by fostering adaptive governance of groundwater. Overall, the thesis provides improved knowledge on groundwater management that helps to sustain human livelihoods in the long run, especially in the face of increasing environmental uncertainties such as climate change.