ll

OPEN ACCESS

Perspective
A water-function-based framework
for understanding and governing
water resilience in the Anthropocene
Malin Falkenmark1 and Lan Wang-Erlandsson1,2,*
1Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
2Bolin Centre for Climate Research, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
*Correspondence: lan.wang@su.se
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2021.01.009

SUMMARY

The freshwater cycle over land is fundamental for sustainability and resilience, yet is extensively modified and
shaped by a vast range of human interventions in the land, water, and climate systems. The consequences of
human water-cycle modifications can be non-linear, delayed, and distributed across boundaries, sectors,
and scale. This complexity renders freshwater challenges difficult to govern and manage. We here propose
a framework for understanding water’s many functions for supporting, regulating, and stabilizing hydro-cli-
matic, hydro-ecological, and hydro-social systems. This framework recognizes human impacts on major par-
titioning points, interactions among water functions, and stabilization and destabilization processes. A func-
tional understanding of the freshwater cycle can integrate with social-ecological resilience-building
principles, complement existing water sustainability governance approaches, and highlight the potential
need for Earth-system-level governance of water. Recognizing water’s diverse functional roles for resilience
may promote a new generation of holistic and integrative water-land-climate governance.

WATER’S FUNCTIONAL ROLE FOR RESILIENCE
The freshwater cycle serves multiple functions. It is simulta-
neously a critical generator of food, energy, and other ecological
services, a key regulator of the Earth’s climate, and a recipient
and transmitter of change through floods and droughts caused
by global warming.1,2 As such, the functioning of the water cycle
is fundamental for resilience, which we here refer to as the capac-
ity of social-ecological systems to deal with shocks, adapting to
changing conditions and transforming in crises.3 In the face of re-
silience erosion, a social-ecological system may undergo regime
shift and operate under completely new structures and functions.4
Water resilience—i.e., the capacity of the water cycle to support
the safeguarding of social-ecological resilience—is underpinned
by water functions1,5 (Box 1) and involves both green water
(here referring to soil moisture, terrestrial evaporation, and terres-
trial precipitation) and blue water (here referring to groundwater,
surface water, and land-based glaciers). Through three green wa-
ter functions, water regulates the Earth’s climate, supports
biomass production, and secures moisture feedback to the atmo-
sphere.1 Through five blue water functions, water supplies house-
holds, industry, and energy production, transports nutrients and
pollution, provides a buffer in water-scarce periods, regulates
the functioning of aquatic ecosystems, and supports aquatic
biomass production.1 Together, the water functions are funda-
mental for hydro-ecological, hydro-climatic, and hydro-social sys-
tems, within which humanity has during the past Holocene
millennia developed intricate and advanced societies.6–8
The global human society is currently set on a trajectory to-
ward unprecedented ecological and social challenges from
local to global scale.6,7 Humans have already massively modi-
fied the water cycle through greenhouse gas emissions, water
pollution, water withdrawals, and land-use changes.24,25
Mounting evidence points to the critical role of water distur-
bances for pushing systems dangerously near or beyond
tipping points,4 including aquatic,26 dryland,27 and tropical for-
est systems28 worldwide. The erosion of water resilience has
caused both environments and societies to fundamentally
change or even collapse.29,30
Addressing these challenges requires consideration of system
dynamics and water’s fundamental functions, both by the over-
arching social-political processes (governance) and by the oper-
ational decision-making and coordination (management) that af-
fects water-cycle dynamics. Nevertheless, despite the
accelerated cross-scale and cross-sector interactions of wa-
ter-cycle changes across the land-water-climate continuum up
to the Earth-system scale, water governance and management
still largely focus on surface water, and land and climate gover-
nance and management still insufficiently consider water-cycle
dynamics. Concepts that focus on water’s contributions to hu-
man societies also emphasize responses to the consequences
of water-cycle change rather than a priori recognition of water’s
functions for system stabilization. There is thus a gap between a
holistic cross-scale understanding of biophysical processes and
the accounting of social-ecological manifestations of water-cy-
cle change in all water-related governance and management.

One Earth 4, February 19, 2021 ª 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. 213
This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
 ll
OPEN ACCESS Perspective

Box 1. Water functions

Water functions highlight the different ways in which water supports resilience in social-ecological systems and in the Earth sys-
tem.1,8 Most of these functions are supported by natural systems (which may have been negatively disturbed by human activities),
while other functions (e.g., water supply from reservoirs and irrigation systems) are constructed by humans. Given the cyclic nature
of water, there are naturally overlaps and interlinkages among functions. Water functions differ from, e.g., ecosystem services by
their focus on the systemic roles of water for resilience, rather than the biological benefits brought to societies (see also ‘‘Water
functions and related sustainability concepts’’). The figure depicts the water functions, as adapted from Falkenmark et al.1 and
Gleeson et al.8
Green water functions include:
– regulatory (Gr), which involves the regulation of the Earth’s energy balance and climate system through among others carbon
sequestration,9 cloud formation, albedo regulation, latent heat release and temperature regulator, atmospheric boundary layer
development, convective conditions,10 water vapor’s ability to trap heat as a greenhouse gas and interfere with stratospheric
ozone;11
– productive (Gp), which involves the sustenance of food and bioenergy production, as well as biomass growth;12,13 and
– moisture feedback (Gm), which involves the function of recycled evaporation to regulate the water cycle over land.14,15
Blue water functions include:
– regulatory (Br), which involves the role of flow regimes for regulating ecological and biogeochemical processes in aquatic eco-
systems16 as well as the roles of wetlands, groundwater, and glaciers for mediation of albedo and carbon cycling;17
– productive (Bp), which involves the support of aquatic biomass growth, sustenance of groundwater-based terrestrial ecosys-
tems, as well as agricultural production sustained by blue water;13
– storage (Bst), which involves the function of blue water stocks18 to uphold aquatic habitats, geomorphological processes, hy-
drological connectivity, and sea level;19,20
– carrier/chemical load (Bc), which involves the function of river flows and base flows to carry nutrients21 and pollution;22 and
– supply (Bsu), which involves the function of withdrawn water used for water supply in society.23
We view these eight water functions as a basic set of functions for interpreting and understanding the full range of water’s roles for
supporting social-ecological resilience. The categorization of water functions may be adapted to specific contexts and scales.
For example, in Earth resilience context, the key water functions have been proposed to include hydro-climatic regulation, hydro-
ecological regulation, transport, and storage functions8 (i.e., with the green and blue water’s regulatory and productive functions
folded into these broader categories).
functions
Water

tory Re g
ula
g ula tor
Re Br y
Gr
Pr
e

od
ctiv

u ct
Bp
Pr o d u

ive
Gp

Green
water

Blue
Moi ack
Gm e
feed

rage

water
Bst
stu

Hydrosocial
b

Sto
r

Bs
u Bc of
Su d
pp l rier a
y Car ical lo
h e m
c

Hydroecological Hydroclimatic

Here, we aim to demonstrate how functional water-resilience (the section Interventions in water functions can erode resilience)
thinking can help to bridge this gap. that conceptualizes and illuminates the dynamical cross-scale
This paper takes functional water-resilience thinking1,5,8 relationships between human activities, water functions, and so-
further by organizing and unifying water functions in a framework cial-ecological resilience outcomes. Moreover, we discuss how

214 One Earth 4, February 19, 2021


Perspective
a systemic understanding of human-mediated water-cycle mod-
ifications can contribute toward holistic and integrative water
governance and management (the section Governance of wa-
ter-driven life-support systems) that can safeguard social-
ecological and Earth-system resilience in the Anthropocene.
INTERVENTIONS IN WATER FUNCTIONS CAN ERODE
RESILIENCE
In this section, we introduce a water-function-based resilience
framework (‘‘Visualization of water-resilience erosion pro-
cesses’’) based on a process understanding of human impacts
on water resilience (‘‘Impacts on water-cycle partitioning and
structure,’’ ‘‘Green and blue water-function disturbances,’’ and
‘‘Functional disturbances can cause destabilization’’). We first
set out to establish an understanding of the structural modifica-
tion of the water cycle through changes in water partitioning
ll
OPEN ACCESS
Figure 1. Water-partitioning points in the
hydrological cycle over land
Adapted from Rockström et al.5
(‘‘Impacts on water-cycle partitioning and
structure’’). Second, we address the con-
sequences of human actions on green
and blue water functions and evidence of
different types of destabilization outcomes
(‘‘Green and blue water-function distur-
bances’’). Third, we discuss the processes
and dynamics associated with water-func-
tion disturbance (‘‘Functional disturbances
can cause destabilization’’). Last, we pre-
sent the framework through a visualization
of the described water-resilience erosion
processes (‘‘Visualization of water-resil-
ience erosion processes’’).
Impacts on water-cycle partitioning
and structure
Water’s movement through the landscape
and atmosphere dictates that the spatial
and temporal distribution of fresh water is
directly contingent on the vegetation prop-
erties, geomorphology, and atmospheric
processes that determine water partition-
ing. Basic partitioning points are situated
in the terrestrial, aquatic, atmospheric,
and technospheric systems (Figure 1),
and together underpin the structure of the
water cycle over land.
Anthropogenic impacts on land, water,
and climate directly and indirectly affect
all partitioning points in the water cy-
cle.31–33 Land-use change and activities,
such as deforestation and agricultural
management, typically generate alter-
ations in water infiltration,34 evaporation
flows,24,35,36 and temporal distribution of
37
river flows. As such, land-based activities have direct influence
on all green water-partitioning points (see V, V-U, and U in
Figure 1). Water-use activities, involving, e.g., withdrawal from
surface water bodies and aquifers for irrigation, typically in-
crease evaporation,24,35,36 reduce local river flows,38 increase
downwind precipitation,36,39 and decrease water table levels
with subsequent effects on sea-level rise.19 As such, water-use
activities have direct influence on partitioning points associated
with the technosphere and blue water (see S, G, I, and H in
Figure 1). Climate change directly impacts glacial melting,40 hy-
drological extremes,41 water vapor content in the stratosphere
(through both troposphere-stratosphere exchange as well as
methane oxidation),42 and terrestrial moisture feedback43 (see
A and I in Figure 1).
Perturbations of partitioning points are interlinked through
the water cycle as well as through atmospheric, ecological,
and societal dynamics. The water cycle over land starts with
One Earth 4, February 19, 2021 215
 ll
OPEN ACCESS Perspective

Table 1. Examples of how different types of human disturbances result in degradation processes and potential subsequent
destabilization in water-related system
Human disturbance
Water use, overexploitation for irrigation
Land mismanagement, global warming
Deforestation, irrigation
Deforestation, fire, global warming
Global warming, irrigation
Global warming, pollution
Global warming, water withdrawal
Global warming, aerosol emissions, large-
scale land-use change
Synthesized based on Table S1.
Degradation mechanism, feedbacks, and
tipping processes Destabilization outcomes
water diversion beyond the groundwater groundwater depletion, river depletion
recharge, or leads to reduced return flow to
the river
soil crusting at the upper partitioning point desertification
at the soil surface, reducing infiltration into
the soil
disturbing the partitioning between water salinization
uptake, increasing percolation and seepage
water that causes salinization
decreasing evaporation, atmospheric vapor savannization
flow, and reduced regeneration of
precipitation; synergies with fires and
global-warming-induced droughts
irrigation releases latent heat, which monsoon shift
modifies land-sea temperature gradient,
which affects monsoon onsets
global-warming-induced increase in glacial melt
temperature enhances melting; pollution
decreases albedo and accelerates melting
thermal expansion of ocean water, melting sea-level rise
of ice sheets, groundwater contribution to
sea-level rise
modification of atmospheric circulation and rainfall regime change
precipitation formation

precipitation from ocean and recycles multiple times over
land14 before finally returning to oceans as precipitation, or sur-
face water and submarine groundwater discharge. Thus, the
earlier in the terrestrial water cycle that partitioning changes
occur, the more subsequent effects can be expected in down-
wind and downstream regions.14,36,44,45 For example,
increased land surface impermeability can reduce infiltration,
subsequently increase runoff, reduce soil moisture availability
for evaporation, and hence moisture supply for subsequent
precipitation. Nevertheless, the direction of impacts can also
be opposite to the direction of water flows, through influence
on climatic dynamics (e.g., soil moisture effects on atmospheric
stability and precipitation patterns10), ecosystems, and people
(e.g., drought impacts on herbivore migration46 or rural com-
munity adaptation strategies47 with potentially displaced ef-
fects on water partitioning).
Green and blue water-function disturbances
Human activities that change water partitioning and water func-
tions can lead to hydrological consequences that may destabi-
lize social-ecological systems. We reviewed the literature for ex-
amples of these processes and found ample evidence of green
and blue water-function disturbances and system destabiliza-
tions caused by different types of human activities (Table S1,
and synthesized in Table 1).
Evidence of green water-function disturbances include, for
example, human impacts on the (1) regulatory function (Gr)
such as desertification and soil erosion in Sahel48 and China’s
Loess Plateau,49 (2) productive function (Gp) such as water log-
ging in Australia,50 and (3) moisture feedback function (Gm)
such as through deforestation impacts on tropical forest re-
silience.51
Evidence of blue water-function disturbances include, for
example, human impacts on the (1) regulatory function (Br) such
as river flow fragmentation through construction of dams and res-
ervoirs,52,53 (2) productive function (Bp) such as loss of aquatic
production caused by pollution,54 (3) storage function (Bst) such
as groundwater depletion in the High Plains in the United States,55
(4) carrier function (Bc) such as agricultural pollution,56 hypox-
ia,57,58 salinization and alkalinization,59,60 and industrial contami-
nation of lakes,61 and (5) water supply function (Bsu) such as the
loss of water supply associated with the drainage of the Aral Sea.62
Importantly, these cases demonstrate that social-ecological
resilience can be profoundly impacted by human mediation of
green water, land system, and climatic processes outside the
traditional blue water sector where focus is on visible, liquid wa-
ter. Green water functions involve larger quantities of water (1.0–
1.7 times water flows as compared with the amount of precipita-
tion over land) in comparison with blue water functions that
involve 0.6–1.0 times this amount.1This highlights the impor-
tance of allowing social and ecological systems to reuse water
and maintain multiple cycles of water over terrestrial areas. In
other words, activities that reduce terrestrial evaporation, in-
crease runoff, or in other ways cut short the path between the
start (i.e., oceanic precipitation’s first landing on land) and the
end (e.g., the river outflow to ocean) of the terrestrial water cycle,

216 One Earth 4, February 19, 2021


Perspective
in fact directly reduce freshwater availability on land and the
associated water functions.
Green water functions tend to be associated with large-scale
systems, such as the Amazon forest-rainfall system that is also
connected to other major elements in the Earth system,63
whereas blue water functions are mostly connected to local wa-
ter resources management at catchment or aquifer scale. How-
ever, with the increase of human perturbation since the Great Ac-
celeration and the dawn of the Anthropocene, the scales of both
green and blue the water-function implications have grown over
time. For example, water pollution used to be a local problem,
but now accrues to regional- and global-scale problems.
Functional disturbances can cause destabilization
Anthropogenic disturbances of water functions, primarily
through water use, land management, and climate change,
may result in system destabilization, i.e., linear collapse or
non-linear regime shift.1,64–66 We will in the following explain
these terms by using examples with the impacts of a control var-
iable perturbation on a response variable, although in reality a
state of a social-ecological system is typically characterized by
multiple variables and relationships among them.
Linear collapse occurs through gradual degradation of a con-
trol variable (such as water withdrawal) that results in a propor-
tional response (such as river flow). Any restoration of the control
variable likewise results in a proportional restoration of the
response variable.
Non-linear regime shift occurs if a change in a control variable
(such as rainfall) does not result in a direct proportional response
(such as tree cover), and the reversibility of the response variable
can vary.67 A regime shift is considered hysteretic if the revers-
ibility of a response variable depends on its history. For example,
once rainforests are lost, higher levels of rainfall are required to
restore the original tree cover (i.e., higher levels than those
required to trigger forest losses in the first place).28 High levels
of hysteresis can be considered irreversible within human-rele-
vant time scales (such as desertification impacts on soil mois-
ture). Of course, a regime shift can also be considered truly irre-
versible, such as in the case of species extinction. Hysteretic and
irreversible non-linear regime shifts can happen if a disturbance
of a social-ecological system is amplified by positive feedback
and thereby approaches tipping points, beyond which destabili-
zation accelerates toward an alternative regime, and recovery to
the original state becomes difficult or impossible.
Feedbacks can be either positive and self-reinforcing, or
negative and stabilizing. Positive feedbacks amplify the effects
of an initial disturbance, and negatively impact a system’s ability
to recover. Negative feedbacks buffer the impacts of the initial
disturbance and help the system maintain its current function
and structure. For example, climate-change-induced warming
may suppress net carbon uptake in dry conditions and further
contribute to rising carbon concentrations in the atmosphere
(positive feedback), while warming in wet conditions may in-
crease terrestrial ecosystem carbon uptake and help dampen
climate change (negative feedback).68 Beyond environmental
tipping cases and feedback processes, there is also important
social dynamics.1
We propose a heuristic acronym that summarizes five key as-
pects of water-related destabilization in the Anthropocene that
ll
OPEN ACCESS
we think are particularly challenging to address within current
conventional water-management paradigms: delay, redistribu-
tion, intertwinements, permanence, and scale (DRIPS). First,
consequences of water partitioning and function modifications
may show up long after these have taken place. Delay may occur
because (1) erosion of system resilience becomes evident only in
the case of disturbance and (2) system response is slow. For
example, deforestation may alter the atmospheric partitioning
in terms of regional water cycling in the Amazon, but the subse-
quent consequences in terms of forest loss only occur when loss
in water cycling concurs with drought disturbance.69 An example
of slow system response can be illustrated by the consequences
of ecosystem collapse and species extinction that only become
evident long after waters have been polluted, due to the time for,
e.g., pollutants to spread in the environment and to accumulate
in top predators through the food chain.
Second, water-function perturbations may result in spatial and
temporal redistribution within the water cycle. For example, infil-
tration loss reduces water retention, reduces water available for
transpiration, and speeds up the hydrological cycle. Because
transpiration (notably the part that occurs during dry spells)
can travel longer distances in the atmosphere than the fast evap-
orative flow interception evaporation (that largely occurs during
rain events),70,71 long-distance rainfall recycling can also be
affected by local modifications in water partitioning.
Third, inherent intertwinements among water-partitioning
changes, water-function modifications, and other parts of com-
plex social-ecological systems can result in surprising synergies,
cascades, and teleconnections. For example, deforestation per-
turbs several water-partitioning points at the same time (i.e., in
the vegetation, vegetation-unsaturated zone, unsaturated
zone, and atmosphere), and can produce synergistic impacts
with climate-change-induced droughts.69 In addition, initial for-
est loss (perhaps in combination with drought conditions aggra-
vated by anthropogenic climate change) may trigger downwind
rainfall reductions that lead to cascading forest loss in remote
downwind areas72 and have teleconnected impacts on large-
scale atmospheric circulation patterns.63,73 Links between wa-
ter-resilience loss and social dynamics have also been made,
although these can be disputed and more difficult to ascer-
tain.74–76 For example, water-resilience loss has been suggested
to be linked to the Mesopotamian and Mayan civilization col-
lapses29,77 and the Syrian conflict/Arab spring.76
Fourth, partitioning modifications may result in consequences
in varying degrees of permanence as a result of system hystere-
sis and/or cost and feasibility of restoration. For example, soil
erosion impacts on water partitioning and functions have a rela-
tively high permanence from a human perspective, due to a com-
bination of both hysteresis and costs associated with, e.g.,
accelerating ecological succession for soil restoration.78,79
Last, the unprecedented scale of human perturbations to wa-
ter functions and other parts of the Earth system also means that
we are at risk of destabilizing systems at unprecedentedly large
scales. More often than not, degradation and destabilization of
social-ecological systems are the combined results of multiple,
diverse, and interrelated perturbations1 in green and blue water
functions. The buildup of multiple water-function disturbances
may also lead to increased severity of ecosystem collapses,
possibly contributing to cross-scale interactions and upscaling
One Earth 4, February 19, 2021 217
 ll
OPEN ACCESS Perspective

A Water function wheel B Iteraction among partitioning points Figure 2. The water-function wheel
V A I (A) The relationships between human actions, par-
titioning points, water functions, and resulting
destabilization or stabilization outcomes (see also
VU
Box 2 and Figure 3).
(B) Interactions among partitioning points.
U S (C) Interactions among water functions.
Gr Br
(D) Spatial scales of water functions.
For legend of the partitioning points, see Figure 1.
G

A C Iteraction among water functions

S
Gp

Bp
V Br

VU S Gr Bp bance. The carrier, productive, and regula-

U Human tory functions can extend well beyond the
action
I
A Gp Bst local watershed where disturbance oc-
S
curs, and accumulatively have global im-
G
Bst
Gm

S S Gm Bc plications. Green water functions (Gr, Gp,

Bsu Gm) may be local, but often also have
D Spatial scales of water functions regional- to global-scale effects through
Bs
u B c Gr propagation via atmospheric processes.
Gp
Direct water-balance effects through
Gm
Bp green productive (Gp) and moisture feed-
Br
Bst
back functions (Gm) are primarily regional
Bc in scale, but affect large-scale energy bal-
Bsu
ance and circulation patterns through the
Spatial scale
regulatory function (Gr).
Water functions also operate at different
temporal scales, but are not easily gener-
effects. For example, local constructions of dams and reservoirs alizable by functional type and are therefore not depicted in
are connected to regional river fragmentation and flow distur- Figure 2. Both blue and green water functions are necessarily
bance for wider aquatic ecosystems.52,80 With at least 2.8 million maintaining social and ecological processes at sub-diurnal
reservoirs (>0.1 ha) constructed worldwide,81 and in combina- scales (e.g., transpiration and water use for life sustenance),
tion with methane emissions associated with eutrophication, but destabilization outcomes associated with any of the water
the aggregated impacts on biodiversity and climate also extend functions can be long term and irreversible (see also the section
to the global scale.82 In the Anthropocene, nothing is solely local. Functional disturbances can cause destabilization and Table
S1). Reasons for destabilization persistency include: long water
Visualization of water-resilience erosion processes stock turnover time (e.g., of fossil groundwater aquifers associ-
We introduce a conceptual water-functions-based resilience ated with Bst); societal systems (e.g., conflicts and collapse
framework, a water-function wheel (Figure 2), which visualizes associated with Bsu); species extinctions (e.g., river fragmenta-
and summarizes the findings of how human actions may lead tion impacts of aquatic systems53 associated with Br and Bp, or
to social-ecological destabilization outcomes (see Table 1). rainfall impacts on terrestrial ecosystem27,28); hydrological feed-
The water-function wheel places ‘‘human actions’’ in its center, back alterations (e.g., desertification and moisture feedback72
which first and directly affect hydrological partitioning points associated with Gm and Gp); persistency of pollutants (associ-
through interventions in the hydrological system, the land sys- ated with Bc); and long turnover time of greenhouse gas emis-
tem, and the climate system (Figure 2A). The disturbed water- sions in the atmosphere (e.g., soil moisture impacts on terrestrial
partitioning points interact with other partitioning points through carbon uptake associated with Gr84,85).
the connected water cycle, and together affect a similarly inter- The water-function wheel can be used, on par with system dy-
acting set of water functions (Figures 2B and 2C). Subsequently, namics understanding and consideration of DRIPS (see the sec-
these disturbances and interactions result in destabilization or tion Functional disturbances can cause destabilization) to
stabilization outcomes through various processes and feed- analyze and visualize specific types of human actions and the
backs (Figure 2A). The water-function wheel encourages system ecological disturbances generated, as illustrated in Box 2. Un-
integrative thinking that incorporates effects of multiple interac- derstanding water’s functional diversity through the water wheel
tions, drivers, and impacts. may also aid governance, as we discuss in the next section.
The water functions represented in the wheel operate at
different spatial scales (Figure 2D). Water for supply (Bsu) and GOVERNANCE OF WATER-DRIVEN LIFE-SUPPORT
state (Bst) mainly operate at the local scale, although some water SYSTEMS
bodies are large enough to qualify to the regional scale,62 and
groundwater depletion contribution to sea-level rise83 may raise Water-resilience building
Bst to global scale. Similarly, the other blue water functions Water-resilience building, i.e., approaches that secure resil-
mainly operate between the local and the regional scales, de- ience, involves three key stages: sustenance, adaptation, and
pending on the extent and propagation of the human distur- transformation. For an ecological system in balance, the

218 One Earth 4, February 19, 2021

 ll
Perspective OPEN ACCESS

Box 2. Example of how the water-function wheel may be used to indicate consequences of specific human actions on partitioning
points, water functions, and destabilization outcomes
A. DEFORESTATION

Forests are cleared for expansion of cropland and pasture, and forest loss may occur due to hydro-climatic change and fire. Defor-
estation leads to immediate changes in a number of water-partitioning points, e.g., the vegetation canopy and forest floor inter-
ception is often considerably diminished (V), infiltration is changed with changing soil condition (V-U), and percolation through
roots system and storage in the unsaturated zone are severely perturbed (U). These immediate changes in partitioning affects
evaporation flows to the atmosphere, and thus both the moisture feedback (Gm) and the energy balance (Gr). This generates con-
ditions that are less suitable for forest, leading to a positive feedback that facilitates transition to savannization in downwind
areas.72 By itself, the drier conditions in unsaturated soil and potential local reductions of rainfall complicate re-establishment
of the ecological system and recovery of natural biomass production (Gp). The reduction in infiltration can lead to larger river flows
(Bsu), increased risks for flooding (Br), and increased erosion (Bc), with subsequent effects on the aquatic ecosystems (Bp) and the
state of connected surface water and groundwater (Bst).37

B. WATER WITHDRAWAL

Most water withdrawals have the aim of provision of water for household supply, provision of industrial water, and provision of
water for irrigation. Water withdrawals directly influence water partitioning and water functions associated with surface water,
groundwater, and soil moisture: reducing water supply (Bsu), resulting in river and aquifer depletion (Bst), influencing river flow re-
gimes (Br); and when used for irrigation, also increased agriculture production through increased soil moisture (Gp). Indirect inter-
actions will contribute some further water-function alterations by including also impacts on evaporation impacts on energy balance
(Gr) and water balance (Gm), and associated local-regional atmospheric dynamics (such as irrigation impacts on the Indian
monsoon86).
A B

ift ift
o n sh o n sh
so so
on Gr on
m Br m Gr Br
tory Regu y Reg u
la lato tor lato
gu ry g ula ry
Re Re
y

A A
acit

Pr

Pr
drought buffering cap

od

od
Gp

Gp
ctiv

Bp e

ctiv

Bp e
S
uct

u ct
VU
Pr o d u

Pr od u
savannization

iv

iv
V
U
U Forest Water
intervention withdrawal
Mois ack

G
Mois ack

A
feedb

feedb

A
c

t
re

c
on s

te

di
ons
re
ct

te
di

t
ture

ture

c
Gm

Gm
ire

Sta

tion
Sta
Bst

re

on Bst
cti

cti
nd

di

i n
n

ple
fu

fu

t
er

on

t
er

de

W wa W wa
ati

ati

ate f d ate f d
iliz

iliz

su r for o
su r for
on

o
on

ier a e r a
Carr ical lo Carriical lo
ab

pp st pp
ati

ati
ta

ly ly s
ch e m c de ch e m c de
iliz

iliz

Bsu B ba Bsu B
ab

ab

st sin st
sc sc clo
ar n ar su r e
c it
yp sio c it
re v ero yp
entio less rev
entio
n n

response will be sustenance. In the case of depletion, the solu- interactions (foresee), and linear or non-linear destabilization
tion will be adaptation, such as altering the raw water source (repair and recover).
from a depleted river toward turning to seawater desalination. Due to these diverse and dynamic features of water, water-re-
In the case of ecosystem degradation, the solution needs to be silience management needs to be continuous, iterative, and
some type of transformation. Practically, these stages corre- adaptive. Continuity in management is important because even
spond to four policy directions: (1) secure, (2) avoid, (3) foresee,87 short periods of mismanagement may have severe long-term im-
and (4) repair and recover. Each of these corresponds to a stage pacts in hydrological and social-ecological systems character-
in the water-function wheel sequence (Figure 3): human actions ized by non-linear dynamics at different scales. For example,
(secure), alterations of water partitioning (avoid), water-function reduction in infiltration may be difficult to reverse once

One Earth 4, February 19, 2021 219

 ll
OPEN ACCESS
vegetation is removed, natural forest regrowth after forest loss
can be difficult once forest-moisture-supplied rainfall is gone,28
albedo-modulated monsoon feedbacks may favor hysteresis,88
and reverting forest carbon sinks to source can lead to long-
term pressures for the forests in terms of climate-change-
induced droughts and fires84,89 (see also the section Functional
disturbances can cause destabilization, and Tables 1 and S1). It-
erations and adaptations need to be fostered in the Anthropo-
cene because previous management approaches may need to
be continuously re-evaluated and retailored to navigate new sur-
prises and dynamics that can emerge from complex cross-scale
interactions.67,90
An important aspect of resilience building is to transparently
clarify the systems considered and whom the resilience building
benefits. Human interventions and the triggering of feedbacks
do not necessarily exclusively lead to negative outcomes in all
related systems. In many cases, minor or major positive out-
comes occur simultaneously. For example, conversion of forest
to cropland or pasture reduces the long-term productive func-
tioning of the water cycle for natural biomass production (Gp)
but also immediately increases the local agricultural production
(Gp). Consideration of resilience thus critically depends on sys-
tem scope, aim, and definitions.
Water-resilience building can be, and sometimes already is,
well aligned with integrative frameworks water-food-energy
nexus,91,92 multifunctional landscapes,93 integrated water re-
sources management,94 and other integrative management ap-
proaches. Temporal aspects in water-resilience building
(including long-term aspects, such as delay and irreversibility)
highlight the importance of continuous and proactive manage-
ment, as well as the importance of policy that encourages caring
of the future95 despite behavioral tendencies to discount nega-
tive future impacts.96
Water-functions thinking in resilience building
Already existing resilience-building frameworks97–103 could incor-
porate water-functions thinking as an integral part. For illustrative
purposes, we relate water-functions thinking to the seven general
principles of Biggs et al.103 for building social-ecological resilience.
The first three resilience-building principles are deeply con-
nected to biophysical processes, directly linked to key features
220 One Earth 4, February 19, 2021
Perspective
Figure 3. Water-resilience building, i.e.,
approaches that secure resilience, involves
three key stages: sustenance, adaptation,
and transformation
These stages correspond to stages in the water-
function wheel: human actions (secure), alterations
of water partitioning (avoid), water-function in-
teractions (foresee), and linear or non-linear desta-
bilization (repair and recover). Based on Falkenmark
and Rockström.87
of global production ecosystems,90 and therefore directly related
to water resilience:
d The first principle to maintain diversity and redundancy re-
flects multifunctional design, such as permeable urban
surface areas that retain extreme rainfall and prevent
flooding, and multifunctional use of urban spaces for
food production and recreation.90,104
d The second principle of managing connectivity could refer
to physical water flows in landscapes and atmosphere, to
connectivity through embedded water in traded crops, and
to connectivity that needs careful balancing and manage-
ment, as it can be both a bane and a boon.
d The third principle of managing slow variables and feed-
backs is at the core of water-functions thinking (see also
Table 1 and the section Functional disturbances can cause
destabilization), which emphasizes the upholding of parti-
tioning points, consideration of system dynamics, and wa-
ter-cycling integrity.
Water-functions thinking can also be important to consider in
the application of the four last resilience principles,103 which are
chiefly related to the conditions and properties of governance
and management itself:
d The fourth principle to foster complex adaptive systems
thinking is naturally related to water-functions thinking,
as dynamics in the water cycle and functional relationships
are intrinsic parts of complex adaptive systems.
d The fifth principle to encourage learning also includes
learning about water’s diverse functions for supporting
biosphere processes across scales, and the water wheel
can here be useful for highlighting water-knowledge gaps
in water economics and green water governance.105,106
d The sixth principle to broaden participation can similarly
benefit from a holistic view of water to identify stake-
holders. The water wheel may here for example highlight
the often forgotten need to include land sector stake-
holders in water resources decision processes.
d The seventh principle to promote polycentric governance
is finally also well aligned with water-functions thinking,
which promotes system integrative thinking across sectors

Perspective
and scales (e.g., to navigate local-regional-global trade-
offs and synergies in cases such as deforestation and wa-
ter withdrawal; see Box 2).
Water functions and related sustainability concepts
A water-function-based resilience framework emphasizes the
role of functional processes and interactions of different water
flows and stocks in the water circulation for providing social-
ecological resilience and long-term sustainability. This
emphasis differs from ‘‘service’’-based concepts, such as nat-
ural capital,107 ecosystem services,108,109 and nature’s contri-
bution to people.110 These concepts emphasize the benefits
(or disservices) to different aspects of quality of life110 (material
aspects such as water and food security, livelihood, and health,
as well as non-material aspects such as cultural identity, social
relations, and freedom of choice and action).110 The concept of
‘‘nature’s contribution to people’’ includes both potential and
actual generations of services,110 and to some extent overlaps
with water functions (e.g., regulatory functions). Water func-
tions are, however, always ex ante the actual manifestation of
services and contributions to people. As such, water-functions
thinking could encourage a deeper understanding of the role of
the water-related dynamics that underlies all nature’s services
and disservices. This does not mean promoting a narrow wa-
ter-centric management or governance approach, rather the
opposite: clarifying water’s pervasive, dynamical, and multi-
functional roles for resilience can help support water-wise sus-
tainability governance. For example, water functions and key
aspects highlight in DRIPS (see the section Functional distur-
bances can cause destabilization) clearly show the importance
of accounting for dynamics in water footprint accounting
frameworks.111,112
The water-functions concept also aligns with, and goes
beyond, the environmental flows concept, which was introduced
to secure water quality and flow regimes necessary for maintain-
ing predefined aquatic and riparian ecosystem conditions113–116
and has been applied at various scales: from assessment of in-
dividual reservoir constructions to the planetary boundary of
freshwater use;117 and from mere quantification of total river
flows to holistic assessment of regional river networks.118 Meth-
odologies for assessing environmental flows are abundant and
well developed,114,119 and notably the holistic approaches113,114
are well aligned with the objective of the water-function-based
resilience framework to secure blue regulatory and production
functions for social-ecological and Earth-system resilience. Wa-
ter-functions thinking extends upon environmental flow to call for
consideration of the role of the entire water cycle for maintaining
desirable biosphere conditions. Future work now needs to pro-
pose and detail possible methodologies for monitoring and as-
sessing the integrity of the water cycle for biosphere health at
local to global scales.
Global water-resilience governance
Human modification of the water cycle not only influences
global-scale phenomena but also refers to different Earth-sys-
tem-level processes through its hydro-climatic, hydro-ecolog-
ical, transport, and storage functions.8 The importance of the
large-scale green water functions for maintaining the global wa-
ll
OPEN ACCESS
ter circulation is evident120 and involves biomass production in
terrestrial ecosystems (Gp), responses to water’s regulatory
function on moisture and climate (Gr), and the moisture feedback
function itself (Gm). However, human modifications of surface
water, groundwater, and frozen water also modify, e.g., aquatic
ecosystems, geochemical transport, sea level, and radiation bal-
ance. Interactions among human impacts (e.g., synergistic ef-
fects of climate change and deforestation on forest resilience69)
and among subsystems on Earth (e.g., interactions between the
El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning
Circulation, and the Amazon monsoon system and biomass pro-
duction121,122) can further lead to scaled-up effects with implica-
tions for Earth-system resilience.8
These key roles of water functioning for Earth-system resil-
ience have been better clarified thanks to the recent revision of
the planetary boundary for freshwater use6,7 into a general water
planetary boundary.123 This remake explicitly accounts for all
components of the water cycle (atmospheric water, soil mois-
ture, surface water, groundwater, and frozen water) and is
argued to more clearly communicate the diverse functions of wa-
ter for Earth-system resilience.123
Furthermore, global water resilience necessitates a paradigm
shift that sees a resilient biosphere as a fundamental prerequisite
for a sustainable development124 rather than as equal to ‘‘econ-
omy’’ and ‘‘society’’ in its support of sustainability. Conse-
quently, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that refer
to water cycle and biosphere (i.e., SDGs 6, 13, 14, and 15) all
need to be recognized as necessary preconditions for reaching
all other SDGs associated with societal and economical
goals.125
Governing for global water resilience will need cross-scale ap-
proaches,126 for two reasons: due to the specific context nature
of water functions, and in view of the absence of any global
bodies for coordination and governance of water-cycle manage-
ment.127 This predicament is shared with governance of other
spatially distributed Earth-system processes, such as land-sys-
tem change and biodiversity.
Two key approaches that can account for global processes at
local scales are the fair-share approach and the local safe-oper-
ating-space approach. The fair-share approach allocates a
portion of the global ‘‘budget’’ for water modifications to an entity
based on, e.g., population, equality rights, and historical respon-
sibility, among others.128 The local safe-operating-space
approach defines local boundaries to water modifications
beyond which the local system resilience is threatened. Based
on the precautionary principle, the lowest boundary value of
these two approaches can be selected for goal setting in man-
agement.126 If the processes considered in the local and global
context do not coincide, multiple boundary values may need to
be considered simultaneously.126 Given the diversity of water’s
roles and functions for resilience at the local to global scale, there
is a clear need to consider institutional fit,129,130 the nesting of
management entities at different scales,131,132 and nexus ap-
proaches.91,92
CONCLUSIONS
Freshwater is fundamental for all biophysical processes on land,
supporting the terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems and their
One Earth 4, February 19, 2021 221
 ll
OPEN ACCESS
biodiversity. Water supports social-ecological resilience from
the local to global scale through a set of diverse functions
that result from intimate interaction among land, water, and
climate.
This paper clarifies, through a water-functions-based resil-
ience framework, how human actions impact water resilience
through hydrological, ecological, and climatic perturbations: first
through altering water-partitioning points in the water cycle over
land, thereby eroding green and blue water functions, and poten-
tially leading to destabilization of social-ecological systems. The
perturbation processes of water-partitioning points and water
functions may result in delayed system responses, be redistrib-
uted within the water cycle, be intertwined with other non-hydro-
logical social and Earth-system dynamics, result in permanent
changes, and be associated with impacts and destabilization
outcomes at much larger scales through interactions, synergies,
and impact aggregations.
Governance of water functions for social-ecological resilience
needs to be of continuous, adaptive, iterative, and stepwise
character to enable learning in a dynamically changing environ-
ment, and be nested and harmonized over sectors and scales to
manage interactions and interconnectedness. Such governance
involves sustenance if the system resilience is secured, adapta-
tion if resilience has eroded, and transformation if destabilization
has already occurred. As human modification of the water cycle
may concern Earth-system-scale destabilization, suitable gover-
nance structures and management approaches have to consider
both green and blue water functions to secure long-term
ecosystem stabilization.
Given that social-ecological system disturbances are already
widespread, governance will have to focus on both resilience
protection and resilience building. In line with this, the United Na-
tions SDGs need to seek an overarching approach133 that ac-
knowledges biosphere as the fundamental basis for all the
SDGs, and resilience and sustainability as inseparable central
goals. To build water resilience and achieve sustainable and
resilient social-ecological systems, it will be attractive to capture
opportunities for a diversity of desirable land-water-climate syn-
ergies. To secure resilient ecological services for the long term,
integrative consideration of land-water-climate processes will
be essential.
To conclude, water resilience of the life-support system is a
precondition for secure human well-being. Social-ecological
systems are fundamentally dependent on water’s functions to
regulate climate, support biomass production, and supply water
resources for human societies. To secure water resilience,
governance will have to include the following:
d Water uses that remain cyclical and free from losses, green
as well as blue
d Careful management of landscapes that are kept livable
and resilient
d Well-managed food and biomass production
d Adoption of resilience building and protection of ecological
services as central governance goals
d Development of adaptive governance that is able to pre-
vent and remediate complex multiple-cause degradation
of water resilience and account for water-related cross-
scale interactions up to the Earth-system level
222 One Earth 4, February 19, 2021
Perspective
SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION
Supplemental Information can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.
oneear.2021.01.009.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
L.W.-E. acknowledges support from Formas, a Swedish Research Council for
sustainable development (Project Ripples of Resilience, 2018-02345) and the
European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation program grant agreement (Project Earth Resilience
in the Anthropocene, ERC-2016-ADG 743080).
AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
M.F. and L.W.-E. wrote the paper together.
REFERENCES
1. Falkenmark, M., Wang-Erlandsson, L., and Rockström, J. (2019). Un-
derstanding of water resilience in the Anthropocene. J. Hydrol. X 2,
100009.
2. Ripl, W. (2003). Water: the bloodstream of the biosphere. Philos. Trans.
R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. 358, 1921–1934.
3. Folke, C., Carpenter, S.R., Walker, B., Scheffer, M., and Chapin, T.
(2010). Resilience thinking: integrating resilience , adaptability and trans-
formability. Ecol. Soc. 15, 20.
4. Biggs, R., Peterson, G.D., and Rocha, J.C. (2018). The regime shifts data-
base: a framework for analyzing regime shifts in social-ecological sys-
tems. Ecol. Soc. 23, 9.
5. Rockström, J., Falkenmark, M., Folke, C., Lannerstad, M., Barro, J., En-
fors, E., Gordon, L., Heinke, J., Hoff, H., and Pahl-Wostl, C. (2014). Water
Resilience for Human Prosperity (Cambridge University Press).
6. Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K., Persson, A., Chapin, F.S., III, Lam-
bin, E.F., Lenton, T.M., Scheffer, M., Folke, C., Schellnhuber, H.J., et al.
(2009). Planetary boundaries: exploring the safe operating space for hu-
manity. Ecol. Soc. 14, 32.
7. Steffen, W., Richardson, K., Rockstrom, J., Cornell, S.E., Fetzer, I., Ben-
nett, E.M., Biggs, R., Carpenter, S.R., de Vries, W., de Wit, C.A., et al.
(2015). Planetary boundaries: guiding human development on a chang-
ing planet. Science 347, 1259855.
8. Gleeson, T., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Porkka, M., Zipper, S.C., Jaramillo, F.,
Gerten, D., Fetzer, I., Cornell, S.E., Piemontese, L., Gordon, L.J., et al.
(2020). Illuminating water cycle modifications and Earth system resilience
in the Anthropocene. Water Resour. Res. 56, https://doi.org/10.1029/
2019WR024957.
9. Jackson, R.B., Jobbágy, E.G., Avissar, R., Roy, S.B., Barrett, D.J., Cook,
C.W., Farley, K.A., le Maitre, D.C., McCarl, B.A., and Murray, B.C. (2005).
Trading water for carbon with biological carbon sequestration. Science
310, 1944–1947.
10. Guillod, B.P., Orlowsky, B., Miralles, D.G., Teuling, A.J., and Seneviratne,
S.I. (2015). Reconciling spatial and temporal soil moisture effects on af-
ternoon rainfall. Nat. Commun. 6, 6443.
11. Dessler, A.E., Schoeberl, M.R., Wang, T., Davis, S.M., and Rosenlof, K.H.
(2013). Stratospheric water vapor feedback. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A
110, 18087–18091.
12. Novák, V., and van Genuchten, M.T. (2008). Using the transpiration
regime to estimate biomass production. Soil Sci. 173, 401–407.
13. Ja€germeyr, J., Gerten, D., Schaphoff, S., Heinke, J., Lucht, W., and
Rockström, J. (2016). Integrated crop water management might sustain-
ably halve the global food gap. Environ. Res. Lett. 11, 025002.
14. van der Ent, R.J., Savenije, H.G.G., Schaefli, B., and Steele-Dunne, S.C.
(2010). Origin and fate of atmospheric moisture over continents. Water
Resour. Res. 46, https://doi.org/10.1029/2010WR009127.
15. Salati, E., Dall’Olio, A., Matsui, E., and Gat, J.R. (1979). Recycling of wa-
ter in the Amazon basin: an isotopic study. Water Resour. Res. 15,
1250–1258.
16. Smakhtin, V. (2008). Basin closure and environmental flow requirements.
Int. J. Water Resour. Dev. 24, 227–233.
17. Wood, W.W., and Hyndman, D.W. (2017). Groundwater depletion: a sig-
nificant unreported source of atmospheric carbon dioxide. Earth’s Future
5, 1133–1135.

Perspective
18. Messager, M.L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I., and Schmitt, O. (2016).
Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a
geo-statistical approach. Nat. Commun. 7, 13603.
19. Wada, Y., Lo, M.H., Yeh, P.J.F., Reager, J.T., Famiglietti, J.S., Wu, R.J.,
and Tseng, Y.H. (2016). Fate of water pumped from underground and
contributions to sea-level rise. Nat. Clim. Chang. 6, 777–780.
20. Chao, B.F., Wu, Y.H., and Li, Y.S. (2008). Impact of artificial reservoir wa-
ter impoundment on global sea level. Science 320, 212–214.
21. Fowler, D., Coyle, M., Skiba, U., Sutton, M.A., Cape, J.N., Reis, S., Shep-
pard, L.J., Jenkins, A., Grizzetti, B., Galloway, J.N., et al. (2013). The
global nitrogen cycle in the twenty-first century. Philos. Trans. R. Soc.
B Biol. Sci. 368, 20130164.
22. van Emmerik, T., and Schwarz, A. (2020). Plastic debris in rivers. WIREs
Water 7, https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1398.
23. Wada, Y., and Bierkens, M.F.P. (2014). Sustainability of global water use:
past reconstruction and future projections. Environ. Res. Lett. 9, 104003.
24. Sterling, S.M., Ducharne, A., and Polcher, J. (2012). The impact of global
land-cover change on the terrestrial water cycle. Nat. Clim. Chang. 3,
385–390.
25. Chaplin-Kramer, R., Sharp, R.P., Weil, C., Bennett, E.M., Pascual, U., Ar-
kema, K.K., Brauman, K.A., Bryant, B.P., Guerry, A.D., Haddad, N.M.,
et al. (2019). Global modeling of nature’s contributions to people. Sci-
ence 366, 255–258.
26. Ho, J.C., Michalak, A.M., and Pahlevan, N. (2019). Widespread global in-
crease in intense lake phytoplankton blooms since the 1980s. Nature
574, 667–670.
27. Berdugo, M., Delgado-Baquerizo, M., Soliveres, S., Hernández-Clem-
ente, R., Zhao, Y., Gaitán, J.J., Gross, N., Saiz, H., Maire, V., Lehman,
A., et al. (2020). Global ecosystem thresholds driven by aridity. Science
367, 787–790.
28. Staal, A., Fetzer, I., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Bosmans, J.H.C., Dekker, S.C.,
van Nes, E.H., Rockström, J., and Tuinenburg, O.A. (2020). Hysteresis of
tropical forests in the 21st century. Nat. Commun. 11, 4978.
29. Douglas, P.M.J., Pagani, M., Canuto, M.A., Brenner, M., Hodell, D.A.,
Eglinton, T.I., and Curtis, J.H. (2015). Drought, agricultural adaptation,
and sociopolitical collapse in the Maya Lowlands. Proc. Natl. Acad.
Sci. U S A 112, 5607–5612.
30. Kuil, L., Carr, G., Viglione, A., Prskawetz, A., and Blöschl, G. (2016).
Conceptualizing socio-hydrological drought processes: the case of the
Maya collapse. Water Resour. Res. 52, 6222–6242.
31. Berg, A., Findell, K., Lintner, B., Giannini, A., Seneviratne, S.I., Van Den
Hurk, B., Lorenz, R., Pitman, A., Hagemann, S., Meier, A., et al. (2016).
Land-atmosphere feedbacks amplify aridity increase over land under
global warming. Nat. Clim. Chang. 6, 869–874.
32. Gherardi, L.A., and Sala, O.E. (2015). Enhanced precipitation variability
decreases grass- and increases shrub-productivity. Proc. Natl. Acad.
Sci. U S A 112, 12735–12740.
33. Berghuijs, W.R., Harrigan, S., Molnar, P., Slater, L.J., and Kirchner, J.W.
(2019). The relative importance of different flood-generating mechanisms
across Europe. Water Resour. Res. 55, https://doi.org/10.1029/
2019WR024841.
34. Sun, D., Yang, H., Guan, D., Yang, M., Wu, J., Yuan, F., Jin, C., Wang, A.,
and Zhang, Y. (2018). The effects of land use change on soil infiltration
capacity in China: a meta-analysis. Sci. Total Environ. 626, 1394–1401.
35. Gordon, L.J., Steffen, W., Jönsson, B.F., Folke, C., Falkenmark, M., Jo-
hannessen, A., and Johannessen, Å. (2005). Human modification of
global water vapor flows from the land surface. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci.
U S A 102, 7612–7617.
36. Wang-Erlandsson, L., Fetzer, I., Keys, P.W., van der Ent, R.J., Savenije,
H.H.G., and Gordon, L.J. (2018). Remote land use impacts on river flows
through atmospheric teleconnections. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 22,
4311–4328.
37. Ellison, D., Morris, C.E., Locatelli, B., Sheil, D., Cohen, J., Murdiyarso, D.,
Gutierrez, V., Noordwijk, M.van, Creed, I.F., Pokorny, J., et al. (2017).
Trees, forests and water: cool insights for a hot world. Glob. Environ.
Chang. 43, 51–61.
38. Döll, P., Fiedler, K., and Zhang, J. (2009). Global-scale analysis of river
flow alterations due to water withdrawals and reservoirs. Hydrol. Earth
Syst. Sci. 13, 2413–2432.
39. Keune, J., Sulis, M., Kollet, S., Siebert, S., and Wada, Y. (2018). Human
water use impacts on the strength of the continental sink for atmospheric
water. Geophys. Res. Lett. 45, 4068–4076.
40. Raper, S.C.B., and Braithwaite, R.J. (2006). Low sea level rise projections
from mountain glaciers and icecaps under global warming. Nature 439,
311–313.
ll
OPEN ACCESS
41. Dai, A. (2013). Increasing drought under global warming in observations
and models. Nat. Clim. Chang. 3, 52–58.
42. Yue, J., Russell, J., Gan, Q., Wang, T., Rong, P., Garcia, R., and Mlync-
zak, M. (2019). Increasing water vapor in the stratosphere and meso-
sphere after 2002. Geophys. Res. Lett. 46, 13452–13460.
43. Findell, K.L., Keys, P.W., van der Ent, R.J., Lintner, B.R., Berg, A., Krast-
ing, J.P., Findell, K.L., Keys, P.W., Ent, R.J.van der, Lintner, B.R., et al.
(2019). Rising temperatures increase importance of oceanic evaporation
as a source for continental precipitation. J. Clim. 32, 7713–7726.
44. Goessling, H.F., and Reick, C.H. (2013). Continental moisture recycling
as a Poisson process. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 17, 4133–4142.
45. Zemp, D.C., Schleussner, C.-F., Barbosa, H.M.J., van der Ent, R.J.,
Donges, J.F., Heinke, J., Sampaio, G., and Rammig, A. (2014). On the
importance of cascading moisture recycling in South America. Atmos.
Chem. Phys. 14, 13337–13359.
46. Abraham, J.O., Hempson, G.P., and Staver, A.C. (2019). Drought-
response strategies of savanna herbivores. Ecol. Evol. 9, 7047–7056.
47. Haeffner, M., Baggio, J.A., and Galvin, K. (2018). Investigating environ-
mental migration and other rural drought adaptation strategies in Baja
California Sur, Mexico. Reg. Environ. Chang. 18, 1495–1507.
48. Mbow, C., Brandt, M., Ouedraogo, I., de Leeuw, J., and Marshall, M.
(2015). What four decades of earth observation tell us about land degra-
dation in the Sahel? Remote Sens. 7, 4048–4067.
49. Zhao, G., Mu, X., Wen, Z., Wang, F., and Gao, P. (2013). Soil erosion, con-
servation, and eco-environment changes in the loess plateau of China.
Land Degrad. Dev. 24, 499–510.
50. McFarlane, D.J., and Williamson, D.R. (2002). An overview of water log-
ging and salinity in southwestern Australia as related to the ‘Ucarro’
experimental catchment. Agric. Water Manag. 53, 5–29.
51. Staal, A., Tuinenburg, O.A., Bosmans, J.H.C., Holmgren, M., Van Nes,
E.H., Scheffer, M., Zemp, D.C., and Dekker, S.C. (2018). Forest-rainfall
cascades buffer against drought across the Amazon. Nat. Clim. Chang.
8, 539–543.
52. Nilsson, C., Reidy, C.A., Dynesius, M., and Revenga, C. (2005). Fragmen-
tation and flow regulation of the world’s large river systems. Science 308,
405–408.
53. Grill, G., Lehner, B., Thieme, M., Geenen, B., Tickner, D., Antonelli, F.,
Babu, S., Borrelli, P., Cheng, L., Crochetiere, H., et al. (2019). Mapping
the world’s free-flowing rivers. Nature 569, 215–221.
54. Sayer, C.D., Hoare, D.J., Simpson, G.L., Henderson, A.C.G., Liptrot,
E.R., Jackson, M.J., Appleby, P.G., Boyle, J.F., Jones, J.I., and Waldock,
M.J. (2006). TBT causes regime shift in shallow lakes. Environ. Sci. Tech-
nol. 40, 5269–5275.
55. Terrell, B.L., Johnson, P.N., and Segarra, E. (2002). Ogallala aquifer
depletion: economic impact on the Texas high plains. Water Policy
4, 33–46.
56. Sun, B., Zhang, L., Yang, L., Zhang, F., Norse, D., and Zhu, Z. (2012).
Agricultural non-point source pollution in China: causes and mitigation
measures. Ambio 41, 370–379.
57. Arend, K.K., Beletsky, D., Depinto, J.V., Ludsin, S.A., Roberts, J.J., Ru-
cinski, D.K., Scavia, D., Schwab, D.J., and Höök, T.O. (2011). Seasonal
and interannual effects of hypoxia on fish habitat quality in central Lake
Erie. Freshw. Biol. 56, 366–383.
58. Zhou, Y., Michalak, A.M., Beletsky, D., Rao, Y.R., and Richards, R.P.
(2015). Record-breaking lake Erie hypoxia during 2012 drought. Environ.
Sci. Technol. 49, 800–807.
59. Kaushal, S.S., Groffman, P.M., Likens, G.E., Belt, K.T., Stack, W.P., Kelly,
V.R., Band, L.E., and Fisher, G.T. (2005). From the cover: increased sali-
nization of fresh water in the northeastern United States. Proc. Natl.
Acad. Sci. U S A 102, 13517–13520.
60. Kaushal, S.S., Likens, G.E., Pace, M.L., Utz, R.M., Haq, S., Gorman, J.,
and Grese, M. (2018). Freshwater salinization syndrome on a continental
scale. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A 115, E574–E583.
61. Ma, Z., Chen, K., Yuan, Z., Bi, J., and Huang, L. (2013). Ecological risk
assessment of heavy metals in surface sediments of six major Chinese
freshwater lakes. J. Environ. Qual. 42, 341–350.
62. P. Micklin, N.V. Aladin, and I.S. Plotnikov, eds. (2014). The Aral Sea: The
Devastation and Partial Rehabilitation of a Great Lake (Springer-Verlag).
63. Steffen, W., Rockström, J., Richardson, K., Lenton, T.M., Folke, C., Liver-
man, D., Summerhayes, C.P., Barnosky, A.D., Cornell, S.E., Crucifix, M.,
et al. (2018). Trajectories of the earth system in the anthropocene. Proc.
Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A 115, 8252–8259.
64. Folke, C., Carpenter, S., Walker, B., Scheffer, M., Elmqvist, T., Gunder-
son, L., and Holling, C.S. (2004). Regime shifts, resilience, and biodiver-
sity in ecosystem management. Annu. Rev. Ecol. Evol. Syst. 35, 557–581.
One Earth 4, February 19, 2021 223
 ll
OPEN ACCESS
65. Crépin, A.S., Biggs, R., Polasky, S., Troell, M., and de Zeeuw, A. (2012).
Regime shifts and management. Ecol. Econ. 84, 15–22.
66. Rocha, J.C., Peterson, G.D., Biggs, R., F.C., III, Spelman, M., and Hurlin,
W. (2015). Regime shifts in the anthropocene: drivers, risks, and resil-
ience. PLoS One 10, e0134639.
67. Gordon, L.J., Peterson, G.D., and Bennett, E.M. (2008). Agricultural mod-
ifications of hydrological flows create ecological surprises. Trends Ecol.
Evol. 23, 211–219.
68. Quan, Q., Tian, D., Luo, Y., Zhang, F., Crowther, T.W., Zhu, K., Chen,
H.Y.H., Zhou, Q., and Niu, S. (2019). Water scaling of ecosystem carbon
cycle feedback to climate warming. Sci. Adv. 5, https://doi.org/10.1126/
sciadv.aav1131.
69. Staal, A., Dekker, S.C., Hirota, M., and van Nes, E.H. (2015). Synergistic
effects of drought and deforestation on the resilience of the south-
eastern Amazon rainforest. Ecol. Complex 22, 65–75.
70. Wang-Erlandsson, L., van der Ent, R.J., Gordon, L.J., and Savenije,
H.H.G. (2014). Contrasting roles of interception and transpiration in the
hydrological cycle—Part 1: temporal characteristics over land. Earth
Syst. Dyn. 5, 441–469.
71. van der Ent, R.J., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Keys, P.W., and Savenije, H.H.G.
(2014). Contrasting roles of interception and transpiration in the hydro-
logical cycle—Part 2: moisture recycling. Earth Syst. Dyn. 5, 471–489.
72. Zemp, D.C., Schleussner, C.-F., Barbosa, H.M.J., Hirota, M., Montade,
V., Sampaio, G., Staal, A., Wang-Erlandsson, L., and Rammig, A.
(2017). Self-amplified Amazon forest loss due to vegetation-atmosphere
feedbacks. Nat. Commun. 8, 14681.
73. Boers, N., Marwan, N., Barbosa, H.M.J., and Kurths, J. (2017). A defor-
estation-induced tipping point for the South American monsoon system.
Sci. Rep. 7, 41489.
74. Selby, J., Dahi, O.S., Fröhlich, C., and Hulme, M. (2017). Climate change
and the Syrian civil war revisited. Polit. Geogr. 60, 232–244.
75. Gleick, P.H. (2014). Water, drought, climate change, and conflict in Syria.
Weather. Clim. Soc. 6, 331–340.
76. Abel, G.J., Brottrager, M., Crespo Cuaresma, J., and Muttarak, R. (2019).
Climate, conflict and forced migration. Glob. Environ. Chang. 54,
239–249.
77. Kuil, L., Carr, G., Prskawetz, A., Salinas, J.L., Viglione, A., and Blöschl, G.
(2019). Learning from the ancient Maya: exploring the impact of drought
on population dynamics. Ecol. Econ. 157, 1–16.
78. Jiao, J., Tzanopoulos, J., Xofis, P., Bai, W., Ma, X., and Mitchley, J.
(2007). Can the study of natural vegetation succession assist in the con-
trol of soil erosion on abandoned croplands on the Loess Plateau, China?
Restor. Ecol. 15, 391–399.
79. Rossi, F., Li, H., Liu, Y., and De Philippis, R. (2017). Cyanobacterial inoc-
ulation (cyanobacterisation): perspectives for the development of a stan-
dardized multifunctional technology for soil fertilization and desertifica-
tion reversal. Earth Sci. Rev. 171, 28–43.
80. Choudhary, S., Dey, S., Dey, S., Sagar, V., Nair, T., and Kelkar, N. (2012).
River dolphin distribution in regulated river systems: implications for dry-
season flow regimes in the Gangetic basin. Aquat. Conserv. Mar. Freshw.
Ecosyst. 22, 11–25.
81. Lehner, B., Liermann, C.R., Revenga, C., Vörömsmarty, C., Fekete, B.,
Crouzet, P., Döll, P., Endejan, M., Frenken, K., Magome, J., et al.
(2011). High-resolution mapping of the world’s reservoirs and dams for
sustainable river-flow management. Front. Ecol. Environ. 9, 494–502.
82. Deemer, B.R., Harrison, J.A., Li, S., Beaulieu, J.J., Delsontro, T., Barros,
N., Bezerra-Neto, J.F., Powers, S.M., Dos Santos, M.A., and Vonk, J.A.
(2016). Greenhouse gas emissions from reservoir water surfaces: a
new global synthesis. Bioscience 66, 949–964.
83. Wada, Y., van Beek, L.P.H., Sperna Weiland, F.C., Chao, B.F., Wu, Y.-H.,
and Bierkens, M.F.P. (2012). Past and future contribution of global
groundwater depletion to sea-level rise. Geophys. Res. Lett. 39,
https://doi.org/10.1029/2012GL051230.
84. Hubau, W., Lewis, S.L., Phillips, O.L., Affum-Baffoe, K., Beeckman, H.,
Cunı́-Sanchez, A., Daniels, A.K., Ewango, C.E.N., Fauset, S., Mukinzi,
J.M., et al. (2020). Asynchronous carbon sink saturation in African and
Amazonian tropical forests. Nature 579, 80–87.
85. Green, J.K., Seneviratne, S.I., Berg, A.M., Findell, K.L., Hagemann, S.,
Lawrence, D.M., and Gentine, P. (2020). Large influence of soil moisture
on long-term terrestrial carbon uptake. Nature 565, 476–479.
86. Tuinenburg, O.A. (2013). Atmospheric Effects of Irrigation in Monsoon
Climate: The Indian Subcontinent (Wageningen University), PhD Thesis.
87. Falkenmark, M., and Rockström, J. (2004). Balancing Water for Humans
and Nature: The New Approach in Ecohydrology (Earthscan).
224 One Earth 4, February 19, 2021
Perspective
88. Janssen, R.H.H., Meinders, M.B.J., van Nes, E.H., and Scheffer, M.
(2008). Microscale vegetation-soil feedback boosts hysteresis in a
regional vegetation-climate system. Glob. Chang. Biol. 14, 1104–1112.
89. Esquivel-Muelbert, A., Baker, T.R., Dexter, K.G., Lewis, S.L., Brienen,
R.J.W., Feldpausch, T.R., Lloyd, J., Monteagudo-Mendoza, A., Arroyo,
L., Álvarez-Dávila, E., et al. (2018). Compositional response of Amazon
forests to climate change. Glob. Chang. Biol. 25, https://doi.org/10.
1111/gcb.14413.
90. Nyström, M., Jouffray, J.-B., Norström, A.V., Crona, B., Søgaard Jørgen-
sen, P., Carpenter, S.R., Bodin, Ö., Galaz, V., and Folke, C. (2019). Anat-
omy and resilience of the global production ecosystem. Nature
575, 98–108.
91. Albrecht, T.R., Crootof, A., and Scott, C.A. (2018). The Water-Energy-
Food Nexus: a systematic review of methods for nexus assessment. En-
viron. Res. Lett. 13, 043002.
92. Simpson, G.B., and Jewitt, G.P.W. (2019). The development of the water-
energy-food nexus as a framework for achieving resource security: a re-
view. Front. Environ. Sci. 7, 8.
93. Pahl-Wostl, C. (2006). The importance of social learning in restoring the
multifunctionality of rivers and floodplains. Ecol. Soc. 11, 10.
94. Giordano, M., and Shah, T. (2014). From IWRM back to integrated water
resources management. Int. J. Water Resour. Dev. 30, 364–376.
95. Barfuss, W., Donges, J.F., Vasconcelos, V.V., Kurths, J., and Levin, S.A.
(2020). Caring for the future can turn tragedy into comedy for long-term
collective action under risk of collapse. PNAS 117, 12915–12922.
96. Mubanga, F.C., and Umar, B.B. (2020). Land use policy environmental
discounting behaviour of smallholder farmers in Chibombo District , Cen-
tral Zambia. Land Use Pol. 95, 104551.
97. Folke, C., Carpenter, S., Elmqvist, T., Gunderson, L., Holling, C.S., and
Walker, B. (2002). Resilience and sustainable development: building
adaptive capacity in a world of transformations. Ambio 31, 437–440.
98. Folke, C. (2006). Resilience: the emergence of a perspective for social-
ecological systems analyses. Glob. Environ. Chang. 16, 253–267.
99. Allan, C., and Curtis, A. (2005). Nipped in the bud: why regional scale
adaptive management is not blooming. Environ. Manage. 36, 414–425.
100. Akamani, K., and Wilson, P.I. (2011). Toward the adaptive governance of
transboundary water resources. Conserv. Lett. 4, 409–416.
101. Huitema, D., Mostert, E., Egas, W., Moellenkamp, S., Pahl-Wostl, C., and
Yalcin, R. (2009). Adaptive water governance: assessing the institutional
prescriptions of adaptive (co-)management from a governance perspec-
tive and defining a research agenda. Ecol. Soc. 14, 26.
102. Folke, C., Hahn, T., Olsson, P., and Norberg, J. (2005). Adaptive gover-
nance of social-ecological systems. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 30,
441–473.
103. Biggs, R., Schlu€ter, M., Biggs, D., Bohensky, E.L., BurnSilver, S., Cundill,
G., Dakos, V., Daw, T.M., Evans, L.S., Kotschy, K., et al. (2012). Toward
principles for enhancing the resilience of ecosystem services. Annu. Rev.
Environ. Resour. 37, 421–448.
104. Barthel, S., and Isendahl, C. (2013). Urban gardens, agriculture, and wa-
ter management: Sources of resilience for long-term food security in cit-
ies. Ecol. Econ. 86, 224–234.
105. te Wierik, S.A., Gupta, J., Cammeraat, E.L.H., and Artzy-Randrup, Y.A.
(2020). The need for green and atmospheric water governance. WIREs
Water 7, https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1406.
106. Keys, P.W., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Gordon, L.J., Galaz, V., and Ebbes-
son, J. (2017). Approaching moisture recycling governance. Glob. Envi-
ron. Chang. 45, 15–23.
107. Schumacher, E.F. (1973). Small Is Beautiful; Economics as if People Mat-
tered (Harper Perennial).
108. Brauman, K.A., Daily, G.C., Duarte, T.K., and Mooney, H.A. (2007). The
nature and value of ecosystem services: an overview highlighting hydro-
logic services. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 32, 67–98.
109. Daily, G.C., Söderqvist, T., Aniyar, S., Arrow, K., Dasgupta, P., Ehrlich,
P.R., Folke, C., Jansson, A.M., Jansson, B.O., Kautsky, N., et al.
(2000). Value of nature and the nature of value. Science 289, 395–396.
110. E.S. Brondizio, J. Settele, S. Dı́az, and H.T. Ngo, eds. (2019). Global
Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Inter-
governmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem
Services (IPBES Secretariat).
111. Berger, M., van der Ent, R., Eisner, S., Bach, V., and Finkbeiner, M.
(2014). Water accounting and vulnerability evaluation (WAVE): consid-
ering atmospheric evaporation recycling and the risk of freshwater deple-
tion in water footprinting. Environ. Sci. Technol. 48, 4521–4528.

Perspective
112. Van Noordwijk, M., and Ellison, D. (2019). Rainfall recycling needs to be
considered in defining limits to the world’s green water resources. Proc.
Natl. Acad. Sci. U S A 116, 8102–8103.
113. Tharme, R.E. (2003). A global perspective on environmental flow assess-
ment: Emerging trends in the development and application of environ-
mental flow methodologies for rivers. River Res. Appl. 19, 397–441.
114. Poff, N.L., and Matthews, J.H. (2013). Environmental flows in the Anthro-
pocence: past progress and future prospects. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sus-
tain. 5, 667–675.
115. Arthington, A.H., Bhaduri, A., Bunn, S.E., Jackson, S.E., Tharme, R.E.,
Tickner, D., Young, B., Acreman, M., Baker, N., Capon, S., et al.
(2018). The Brisbane Declaration and global action agenda on environ-
mental flows (2018). Front. Environ. Sci. 6, 45.
116. The Brisbane Declaration (2007). Environmental flows are essential for
freshwater ecosystem health and human well-being, in 10th International
River Symposium and International Environmental Flows Conference.
€germeyr, J., Kummu, M., and Pastor,
117. Gerten, D., Hoff, H., Rockstro, J., Ja
A.V. (2013). Towards a revised planetary boundary for consumptive
freshwater use: role of environmental flow requirements. Curr. Opin. En-
viron. Sustain. 5, 551–558.
118. Poff, N.L., Richter, B.D., Arthington, A.H., Bunn, S.E., Naiman, R.J.,
Kendy, E., Acreman, M., Apse, C., Bledsoe, B.P., Freeman, M.C., et al.
(2010). The ecological limits of hydrologic alteration (ELOHA): a new
framework for developing regional environmental flow standards.
Freshw. Biol. 55, 147–170.
119. Somerville, D.E.. (2010). Stream Assessment and Mitigation Protocols: A
Review of Commonalities and Differences (US EPA Office of Wetlands,
Oceans, and Watersheds). https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/
2015-07/documents/stream_protocols_2010.pdf.
120. Falkenmark, M. (2017). Water and human livelihood resilience: a regional-
to-global outlook. Int. J. Water Resour. Dev. 33, 181–197.
121. Jiménez-Muñoz, J.C., Mattar, C., Barichivich, J., Santamarı́a-Artigas, A.,
Takahashi, K., Malhi, Y., Sobrino, J.A., and Van der Schrier, G. (2016). Re-
cord-breaking warming and extreme drought in the Amazon rainforest
during the course of El Niño 2015-2016. Sci. Rep. 6, 33130.
122. Parsons, L.A., Yin, J., Overpeck, J.T., Stouffer, R.J., and Malyshev, S.
(2014). Influence of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation on
the monsoon rainfall and carbon balance of the American tropics. Geo-
phys. Res. Lett. 41, 146–151.
ll
OPEN ACCESS
123. Gleeson, T., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Zipper, S.C., Porkka, M., Jaramillo, F.,
Gerten, D., Fetzer, I., Cornell, S.E., Piemontese, L., Gordon, L.J., et al.
(2020). The water planetary boundary: interrogation and revision. One
Earth 2, 223–234.
124. Folke, C., Biggs, R., Norström, A.V., Reyers, B., and Rockström, J.
(2016). Social-ecological resilience and biosphere-based sustainability
science. Ecol. Soc. 21, 41.
125. Rockström, J., and Sukhdev, P. (2016). Keynote speech of EAT Stock-
holm Food Forum. https://www.stockholmresilience.org/research/
research-news/2017-02-28-contributions-to-agenda-2030.html.
126. Zipper, S.C., Jaramillo, F., Wang-Erlandsson, L., Cornell, S.E., Gleeson,
€yha
T., Porkka, M., Ha €, T., Crépin, A., Fetzer, I., Gerten, D., et al. (2020).
Integrating the water planetary boundary with water management from
local to global scales. Earth’s Future 8, https://doi.org/10.1029/
2019EF001377.
127. Woodhouse, P., and Muller, M. (2017). Water governance—an historical
perspective on current debates. World Dev. 92, 225–241.
128. Ha€yha
€, T., Lucas, P.L., van Vuuren, D.P., Cornell, S.E., and Hoff, H.
(2016). From planetary boundaries to national fair shares of the global
safe operating space—how can the scales be bridged? Glob. Environ.
Chang. 40, 60–72.
129. Rijke, J., Brown, R., Zevenbergen, C., Ashley, R., Farrelly, M., Morison,
P., and van Herk, S. (2012). Fit-for-purpose governance: a framework
to make adaptive governance operational. Environ. Sci. Policy 22, 73–84.
130. Olsson, P., Folke, C., Galaz, V., Hahn, T., and Schultz, L. (2007).
Enhancing the fit through adaptive co-management: creating and main-
taining bridging functions for matching scales in the Kristianstads Vatten-
rike Biosphere Reserve Sweden. Ecol. Soc. 12, 28.
131. Ostrom, E. (1990). Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions
for Collective Action (Cambridge University Press).
132. Gupta, J., and Zondervan, R. (2013). ‘Glocal’ water governance: a multi-
level challenge in the anthropocene. Curr. Opin. Environ. Sustain. 5,
573–580.
133. Vörösmarty, C.J., Rodrı́guez Osuna, V., Cak, A.D., Bhaduri, A., Bunn,
S.E., Corsi, F., Gastelumendi, J., Green, P., Harrison, I., Lawford, R.,
et al. (2018). Ecosystem-based water security and the sustainable devel-
opment goals (SDGs). Ecohydrol. Hydrobiol. 18, 317–333.
One Earth 4, February 19, 2021 225