F2.8 Artesian springs and oases

F2. Lakes biome

F2

Profile summary

Full profile at https://global-ecosystems.org/explore/groups/F2.8

Brief description

Surface waterbodies fed by (often warm) groundwaters rising to the surface are scattered in dry landscapes of Africa, the Middle East, Eurasia, North America and Australia, but also occur in humid landscapes. Algae, floating plants and leaf fall support waterbugs, crustaceans and small fish making simple foodwebs with some locally restricted species found nowhere else. These ecosystems are sometimes important waterholes for birds and mammals, in otherwise dry landscapes.

Key features

Groundwater dependent ecosystems from artesian waters discharged to the surface, maintaining relatively stable water levels. Often insular systems with high endemism.

Overview of distribution

Mostly in arid regions in Africa, the Middle East, central Eurasia, southwest of North America and Australia’s Great Artesian basin.

Map description

Freshwater ecoregions (Abell et al. 2008) were identified as containing occurrences of these functional groups if: i) their descriptions mentioned features consistent with those identified in the profile of the Ecosystem Functional Group; and ii) if their location was consistent with the ecological drivers described in the profile. Within those areas, locations of small lakes (<100km2), excluding artificial lakes (inclusion on types 1 and 3 only), were taken from the HydroLAKES database (Messager et al. 2016) and combined with global estimates of surface water phenology (classes 1, 2 and 7 from Pekel et al. 2016), occurrences were aggregated to 10 minutes spatial resolution..

Map code and version: F2.8.web.mix v1.0. DOI

Version history

Profile versions

  • v2.1 (2022-04-06): DJ Roux; RT Kingsford; AH Arthington; DA Keith.1
  • v2.01 (NA): NA.
  • v2.0 (2020-05-26): DJ Roux; RT Kingsford; AH Arthington; DA Keith.
  • v1.0 (2020-01-20): DJ Roux; RT Kingsford; DA Keith.

Available maps

Read more details about the current map versions here.

  • Indicative Map (code: F2.8.IM.mix, version v1.0)
  • Web navigation (code: F2.8.web.mix, version v1.0)

Read more details about older or alternative versions of maps for this functional group.

  • Indicative Map: discarded (code: F2.8.IM.orig, version v1.0)
  • Web navigation: duplicated (code: F2.8.web.map, version v1.0)
  • Web navigation: requires review (code: F2.8.web.orig, version v1.0)

References

Main references

References used in the different versions of the profiles.

  • Patten DT, Rouse L, Stromberg JC (2008) Isolated spring wetlands in the Great Basin and Mojave Deserts, USA: potential response of vegetation to groundwater withdrawal Environmental Management 41: 398-413
  • Rossini R, Fensham R, Stewart-Koster B, Gotch T, Kennard M (2018) Biographical patterns of endemic diversity and its conservation in Australia’s artesian desert springs Diversity and Distributions 24, 1-18 DOI:10.1111/ddi.12757
  • Worthington Wilmer J, Elkin C, Wilcox C, Murray L, Niejalke D, Possingham H (2008) The influence of multiple dispersal mechanisms and landscape structure on population clustering and connectivity in fragmented artesian spring snail populations Molecular Ecology 17: 3733-3751

Map references

References used in the different versions of the maps (current and discarded).

  • Abell R, Thieme ML, Revenga C, Bryer M, Kottelat M, Bogutskaya N, Coad B, Mandrak N, Contreras Balderas S, Bussing W, Stiassny MLJ, Skelton P, Allen GR, Unmack P, Naseka A, Ng R, Sindorf N, Robertson J, Armijo E, Higgins JV, Heibel TJ, Wikramanayake E, Olson D, López HL, Reis RE, Lundberg JG, Sabaj Pérez MH, Petry P (2008) Freshwater ecoregions of the world: A new map of biogeographic units for freshwater biodiversity conservation, BioScience 58: 403–414. DOI:10.1641/B580507
  • Messager, M.L., Lehner, B., Grill, G., Nedeva, I., Schmitt, O. (2016) Estimating the volume and age of water stored in global lakes using a geo-statistical approach Nature Communications 13603 DOI:10.1038/ncomms13603
  • Pekel JF, Cottam A, Gorelick N, Belward AS (2016) High-resolution mapping of global surface water and its long-term changes Nature 540, 418-422 DOI:10.1038/nature20584

Footnotes

  1. This is the current version available at official site.↩︎