Huggins, XanderGleeson, TomKummu, MattiZipper, SamWada, YoshihideTroy, TaraFamiglietti, James S.2023-09-032023-09-032022Huggins, X., Gleeson, T., Kummu, M., Zipper, S.C., Wada, Y., Troy, T.J., & Famiglietti, J.S. (2022). Hotspots for social and ecological impacts from freshwater stress and storage loss. Nature Communications. 13, Article number: 439. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-28029-whttps://hdl.handle.net/10388/14948This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/.Humans and ecosystems are deeply connected to, and through, the hydrological cycle. However, impacts of hydrological change on social and ecological systems are infrequently evaluated together at the global scale. Here, we focus on the potential for social and ecological impacts from freshwater stress and storage loss. We find basins with existing freshwater stress are drying (losing storage) disproportionately, exacerbating the challenges facing the water stressed versus non-stressed basins of the world. We map the global gradient in social-ecological vulnerability to freshwater stress and storage loss and identify hotspot basins for prioritization (n = 168). These most-vulnerable basins encompass over 1.5 billion people, 17% of global food crop production, 13% of global gross domestic product, and hundreds of significant wetlands. There are thus substantial social and ecological benefits to reducing vulnerability in hotspot basins, which can be achieved through hydro-diplomacy, social adaptive capacity building, and integrated water resources management practices.enAttribution 2.5 Canadaecosystemhydrological cyclesocial and ecological impactsfreshwater stressstorage lossArticle10.1038/s41467-022-28029-w