Groundwater sustainability initiatives, including sustainable yield and watershed policy protection policies, are growing globally in response to increasing demand for groundwater, coupled with concerns about the effects of climate and land-cover change on groundwater supply. Improved understanding of the impacts of watershed management on groundwater yields and management costs—particularly in the broader context of climate and land-cover change—is critical to inform these initiatives and facilitate integrated land and water management. This study develops a novel, spatially explicit groundwater hydrologic ecosystem services framework, which combines stakeholder-defined land-cover scenarios, sustainable yield estimation using a groundwater simulation optimization approach, and economic valuation, and applies it in the most heavily utilized aquifer Hawai‘i (USA).
