water
Water is one of the most critical resource and constraint in the semi-arid tropics (SAT). To minimise land degradation and sustain crop productivity in the SAT, management and efficient utilisation of rainwater is important. Watershed-based resource utilisation involves the optimum use of the area’s precipitation for the improvement and stabilization of agriculture on the watershed...
Low variable rainfall, high financial risk and poor physical and social infrastructure characterise these semi-arid tropics. Some 350 million poor people in 48 developing countries live in these fragile ecosystems on a budget of one US dollar or less a day. While the number of absolute poor living in the irrigated areas of India declined by 20% (from 37 million to 30 million) between 1972 and...
The energy in falling water can be converted into electrical energy or into mechanical energy to pump water or grind grain. The amount of energy that can be captured is a function of the vertical distance the water drops (the head) and the volume of the water. One hundred cubic metres of water falling 10 metres (a low head application) represents the same energy potential as 10 cubic metres of...
The manual looks at solid waste and water management and provides guidelines and examples of how tourism operations can achieve positive results and minimise harm to a community's ecological and physical systems. Specific case studies highlight larger hotel chains, which have already implemented environmental management systems but the main focus is on SMEs in developing...
The study of baseflow in mountainous areas of basin headwaters, where the characteristics of the often fractured materials are very different to the standard issues concerning porous material applied in conventional hydrogeology, is an essential element in the characterisation and quantification of water system resources. Their analysis through recession fragments...
The Mediterranean environment is characterised by strong temporal variations in rainfall volume and intensity, soil moisture and vegetation cover along the year. These factors play a key role on soil erosion. The aim of this work is to identify different erosive periods in function of the temporal changes in rainfall and runoff characteristics (erosivity, maximum...
An evaluation of the performance of a physically-based distributed model of a small Mediterranean mountain catchment is presented. This was carried out using hydrological response data, including measurements of runoff, soil moisture, phreatic surface level and actual evapotranspiration. A-priori model parameterisation was based as far as possible on property...
The reversal of freshwater acidification in the low mountain ranges of Germany is of public, political and scientific concern, because these regions are near natural ecosystems and function as an important drinking water supply. The aim of this study was to evaluate the status and trends of acidification reversal after two decades of reduced anthropogenic deposition...
This article is dedicated to radar rainfall estimation for the post-event analysis of a flash flood that occurred on 18 September 2007 in Slovenia. The utility of the Mountain Reference Technique is demonstrated to quantify rain attenuation effects that affect C-band radar measurements in heavy rain. Maximum path-integrated attenuation between 15 and 20 dB were...
Snow in the High Atlas Mountains is a major source for freshwater renewal and for water availability in the semi-arid lowlands of south-eastern Morocco. Snowfall- and snow-ablation monitoring and modelling is important for estimating potential water delivery from the mountain water towers to the forelands. This study is part of GLOWA-IMPETUS, an integrated management...
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