Human activities dominate groundwater level trends across England

Groundwater is an indispensable part of the global water cycle and an essential water source for domestic, industrial and agricultural use. In England, groundwater is responsible for approximately 30% of public water supply and more than 75% in the most densely populated and water-stressed Southeast. Here, using a new open-access groundwater levels dataset made available by the Environment Agency, we analyse the trends for 2092 stations across England with record lengths ranging from 9 to 189 years. We show that about half of the stations are experiencing a long-term trend or a sudden change and that the long-term trends are very spatially heterogeneous. We also investigate the potential drivers of these trends, and find that the distribution of trends is more likely connected to human activities than to climate or hydrogeological conditions. In particular, we find that stations showing a slow declining trend are concentrated in areas of high irrigation intensity, while stations showing a slow increasing trend are concentrated in densely populated areas. Our results demonstrate that temporal and spatial variability of groundwater trends is dominated by anthropogenic factors.