Protected areas play an important role in keeping ecosystems and their inhabitants free of human impacts or limiting human impacts to a low level. While there are strict rules considering the protection of the surface inside a protected area, the groundwater underneath is sparsely regulated. As groundwater tends to be in motion and flow through porous materials quite easily, groundwater inside a protected area could be subject to influences, such as land use, groundwater pumping or pollution, from outside the protected area. == Ziele der Arbeit == This project is designed to find out, if humans affect the groundwater in protected areas and if this may influence the ecosystems inside these areas.

Creation of groundwatersheds for the worlds protected areas, Quantifying groundwaterabstraction inside groundwatersheds, Analysing human land use inside groundwatersheds

Andreas Hartmann und Sam Zipper

Andreas Hartmann andreas.hartmann@hydmod.uni-freiburg.de

Englisch