Most groundwater conservation and management efforts focus on protecting groundwater for drinking water and for other human uses with little understanding or focus on the ecosystems that depend on groundwater. However, groundwater plays an integral role in sustaining certain types of aquatic, terrestrial and coastal ecosystems, and their associated landscapes. Our aim was to illuminate the connection between groundwater and surface ecosystems by identifying and mapping the distribution of groundwater dependent ecosystems (GDEs) in California. This layer includes watersheds from the Watershed Boundary Database at the 12-digit hydrologic unit code (HUC12) scale. Each watershed is attributed with summary information about the groundwater dependent ecosystems that fall within that watershed.
The methods and data sources used to geneate this layer are described in detail in the following open access peer-reviewed publication: Howard, J. & Merrifield, M. (2010). Mapping Groundwater Dependent Ecosystems in California. PLoS One, 5, e11249. http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0011249.
