Abstract Surface water availability in drylands has changed with the introduction of artificial water points. Despite known ecological impacts, detailed mapping of this change has not occurred in most drylands. We aimed to quantify the extent and distribution of changes in water availability. We tested whether water availability increased more in pastorally productive areas than less fertile areas, and whether remaining water remote areas are restricted to low productivity landscapes. Our new spatially-explicit method mapped access to water at fine spatial scale, weighting locations by their distance to water and the permanence of those water sources. We demonstrated our method in a study area of over 700,000 km2 in Queensland, Australia, with our mapping showing large changes in water availability since pastoral development. Less than 5% of the study area is now more than 10 km from water, compared with almost 60% previously. Few refuges for grazing-vulnerable communities remain. Even low fertility landscapes showed marked increases in water availability. This has conservation implications for managing production landscapes. Our approach can be applied in any dryland landscapes that have experienced changes in water availability, and can help guide actions such as removing artificial water points to recreate ecological refuges.

中文翻译：

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由于可用水量的长期变化，旱地社区几乎无法躲避放牧

摘要 随着人工取水点的引入，旱地地表水的可用性发生了变化。尽管已知生态影响，但在大多数旱地还没有详细绘制这种变化的地图。我们旨在量化可用水量变化的范围和分布。我们测试了牧区生产区的可用水量是否比不那么肥沃的地区增加得更多，以及剩余的水资源偏远地区是否仅限于低生产力景观。我们新的空间显式方法在精细的空间尺度上绘制了对水的访问，通过它们与水的距离和这些水源的持久性来对位置进行加权。我们在澳大利亚昆士兰超过 700,000 平方公里的研究区域展示了我们的方法，我们的地图显示了自牧区发展以来水资源可用性的巨大变化。现在只有不到 5% 的研究区域距离水面超过 10 公里，而之前这一比例接近 60%。几乎没有为放牧脆弱社区提供的避难所。即使是低肥力景观也显示出可用水量的显着增加。这对管理生产景观具有保护意义。我们的方法可以应用于任何水资源可用性发生变化的旱地景观，并且可以帮助指导行动，例如移除人工水点以重建生态避难所。