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Assessing groundwater ecosystem health, status, and services

Abstract

The concept of ecosystem health is now widely used to communicate the status or condition of a natural environment and is embedded in environmental policies globally. The concept has underpinned ecological assessments for decades but has only recently been applied to groundwater ecosystems. The aim of this chapter was to provide a critical review of current methods for monitoring and assessing the health of groundwater ecosystems, and a discussion of future directions to progress the understanding of ecosystem health, and the provision of ecosystem services in groundwaters.

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