DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.14534386
title: EU-scale maps of ecosystem services provision

description: This dataset is supplement to project deliverable "D4.2 - EU-scale maps of ecosystem services provision" from project "DRYvER - Securing biodiversity, functional integrity and ecosystem services in DRYing riVER networks" funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 869226. This dataset includes map layers of ecosystem services provision in rivers at the European scale. We modelled the provisioning of 4 ecosystem services: water provisioning, dilution capacity, flood regulation in slopes, and drought regulation, in the European river networks, including both perennial and intermittent rivers. Water provisioning refers to the amount of water provided by freshwater ecosystems for consumptive and non-consumptive use. We calculated water provisioning in cubic hectometres in 2019 for the most downstream river reaches in the European river network (87,165 reaches) for 3 hydrological phases, which we defined a priori as pre-dry (March-April), dry (July-August), and post-dry (November-December), and for the whole year. Dilution capacity, measured by dilution factor (DF), is the river's capacity to dilute effluents from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). We calculated DF as the ratio between river flow and WWTP discharge. We calculated DF for 15,081 river reaches: 11,443 of them were perennial and 3638 intermittent. Flood regulation is the capacity of catchment to prevent or mitigate the impact of floods. We modelled the flood regulation in slopes as Hydrological Regulation Index (HRI). HRI is an estimation of the potential capacity of catchment to generate surface runoff; and it is based on slope, soil permeability, and average annual precipitation. Drought regulation is the ability of catchment to hold or store water resources and subsequently support river flow during drought. We calculated drought regulation as Local Recharge Index (LRI) and Surface Storage Index (SSI). Local Recharge Index (LRI) is an estimation of the amount of water (mm) that infiltrates into soil over a year and could then potentially recharge groundwater. Surface Storage Index (SSI) is an estimation of the suitability of different areas in the catchment to operate as surface water retention and storage. We calculated HRI, LRI, and SSI for catchments based on HydroBASINS level 3 sub-units: for 17 catchments of the European river network.
description: This dataset includes 4 main folders: 'Water provisioning', 'Dilution capacity', 'Flood regulation in slopes', 'Drought regulation'; 1 folder for each ecosystem service.Folder 'Water provisioning': includes shapefile with European-scale map layer with values of water provisioning in cubic hectometres for 87,165 reaches for the whole year and for 3 hydrological phases (pre-dry, dry, post-dry).Folder 'Dilution capacity': includes 3 shapefiles with European-scale map layers with values of dilution factor (DF). DF is a ratio and thus do not have any unit. Shapefiles are provided for all reaches (15,081 reaches) and separately for perennial reaches (11,443 reaches) and intermittent reaches (3638 reaches).Folder 'Flood regulation in slopes': includes 17 GeoTIFF files with values of Hydrological Regulation Index (HRI). Files are provided separately for each catchment and filenames include the corresponding HydroBASINS level 3 sub-unit catchment ID. HRI values are normalized across the catchments, so HRI values for all catchments range between 0 to 1.Folder 'Drought regulation' includes two subfolders: 'Local Recharge Index - LRI' and 'Surface Storage Index - SSI', both folders include 17 GeoTIFF files with values of Local Recharge Index (LRI) and Surface Storage Index (SSI), respectively. Files are provided separately for each catchment and filenames include the corresponding HydroBASINS level 3 sub-unit catchment ID. LRI values are in mm; SSI values are normalized across the catchments, i.e., values for all catchments range between 0 to 1.Dataset includes also the related publication for which this dataset is supplement to: project deliverable "D4.2 - EU-scale maps of ecosystem services provision" from project "DRYvER - Securing biodiversity, functional integrity and ecosystem services in DRYing riVER networks" funded by European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 869226.
description: We calculated water provisioning in cubic hectometres in 2019 for the most downstream river reaches in the European river network (87,165 reaches) for 3 hydrological phases, which we defined a priori as pre-dry (March – April), dry (July – August), and post-dry (November – December), and for the whole year. We calculated water provisioning by using monthly river discharge data from "D1.3 - Report on continental-scale high-resolution modeling of streamflow intermittence" from DRYvER project (Döll et al., 2023) for 2019. Calculations were conducted using R and QGIS.

We calculated dilution factor (DF) as the ratio between river flow and the wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) discharge. The annual volume of wastewater treated in 2019 in the European Union by WWTPs was obtained from Waterbase-UWWTD (Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive) dataset (EEA, 2023). River discharge data for 2019 was obtained from "D1.3 - Report on continental-scale high-resolution modeling of streamflow intermittence" from DRYvER project (Döll et al., 2023) for 2019. Calculations were conducted using R and QGIS.

Flood regulation in slopes was modelled as Hydrological Regulation Index (HRI). HRI is based on slope, soil permeability, and average annual precipitation. Slope was calculated from EU-DEM with 25-m spatial resolution (EU-DEM: Digital Elevation Model over Europe, https://land.copernicus.eu/), soil hydraulic properties were derived from HydroSoil v2.0 dataset (Simons et al., 2020), and long-term average annual precipitation data (1970–2000) from WorldClim (Fick and Hijmans, 2017). Map layers were resampled to 50-m spatial resolution before calculations. All calculations were conducted using QGIS.

We calculated drought regulation as Local Recharge Index (LRI) and Surface Storage Index (SSI). LRI was calculated using the Seasonal Water Yield model in InVEST® software (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs; Natural Capital Project, 2024). The data required to run these models were EU-DEM with 25-m spatial resolution (EU-DEM: Digital Elevation Model over Europe, https://land.copernicus.eu/), average monthly precipitation and evapotranspiration from WorldClim (Fick and Hijmans, 2017), land use and land cover (LULC; CORINE Land Cover 2018, https://land.copernicus.eu/), hydrological soil groups from HydroSoil v2.0 dataset (Simons et al., 2020), biophysical table with crop coefficients (Kc from FAO guidelines; Allen et al., 1998) and curve numbers (CN from National Engineering Handbook; USDA-NRCS, 2004) for each class of LULC, and average precipitation events from EMO-1arcmin (Gomes et al., 2020). All map layers were resampled to 25-m spatial resolution before running the models.Surface Storage Index (SSI) is based on topographic wetness index (TWI), slope, plan curvature, LULC, and precipitation. Slope, plan curvature, and TWI were calculated from EU-DEM with 25-m spatial resolution (EU-DEM: Digital Elevation Model over Europe; https://land.copernicus.eu/). LULC data originated from CORINE Land Cover 2018 (https://land.copernicus.eu/), and long-term average annual precipitation data (1970–2000) from WorldClim (Fick and Hijmans, 2017). Map layers were resampled to 25-m spatial resolution before calculations. All calculations were conducted using QGIS.

We calculated HRI, LRI, and SSI for catchments based on HydroBASINS (https://www.hydrosheds.org/products/hydrobasins) level 3 sub-units: for 17 catchments of the European river network.