Search results for "Water resources"
showing 10 items of 152 documents
Co-evolution of hydrological components under climate change scenarios in the Mediterranean area
2015
ABSTRACT The Mediterranean area is historically characterized by high human pressure on water resources. Today, while climate is projected to be modified in the future, through precipitation decrease and temperature increase, that jointly and non-linearly may affect runoff, concerns about water availability are increasing. For these reasons, quantitative assessment of future modifications in the mean annual water availability are important; likewise, the description of the future interannual variability of some hydrological components such as runoff and evapotranspiration are highly wished for water management and ecosystems dynamics analyses. This study investigates at basin spatial scale …
Drought Management Decision Support System by Means of Risk Analysis Models
2007
Droughts in arid and semiarid Mediterranean river basins have an increasing socioeconomic and environmental impact. The problem is especially complex in basins where droughts are very frequent and intense and where water resources are under a massive use. For that reason in the Mediterranean basins it is necessary to manage the water resources in constant alert in order to relieve the consequences of a drought. In this chapter a complete methodology for the mitigation of the droughts is defined. The methodology includes different tools: from the definition of an alert system for the different types of drought up to the simulation and optimization software for water system management. This m…
Toxic cyanobacterial blooms in reservoirs under a semiarid Mediterranean climate: the magnification of a problem
2007
Sicilian reservoirs constitute the most important water resources available on the island. During summer 2001, the intense water utilization of Lake Arancio reservoir reduced the water level significantly. This coincided with the formation of intense blooms formed by the microcystin-producing cyanobacterium Microcystis aeruginosa. During summer 2003, Lake Arancio was continuously filled and the vertical stratification of the water column was maintained, resulting in 5-6 fold lower cell numbers of Microcystis aeruginosa. For both years a significant linear relationship between microcystin net production and Microcysytis cell division was observed, implying that Microcystis cell numbers can b…
Impact of Initial Soil Temperature Derived from Remote Sensing and Numerical Weather Prediction Datasets on the Simulation of Extreme Heat Events
2016
Extreme heat weather events have received increasing attention and has become of special importance as they can remarkably affect sectors as diverse as public health, energy consumption, water resources, natural biodiversity and agricultural production. In this regard, summer temperatures have become a parameter of essential interest under a framework of a hypothetical increase in the number of intense-heat conditions. Thus, their forecast is a crucial aspect bearing in mind a mitigation of the effects and impacts that these intense-heat situations could produce. The current work tries to reach a better understanding of these sorts of situations that are really common over the Western Medit…
Essays in applied microeconomics on water resources management
2017
En el contexto actual de creciente escasez de recursos hídricos, el principal objetivo de esta tesis doctoral es contribuir a la mejora de las políticas urbanas de gestión del agua. En un sentido amplio, las conclusiones centrales derivadas de los ensayos incluidos en la misma se pueden agrupar en torno a cuatro aspectos. En concreto, implicaciones para las políticas de demanda, implicaciones para la gobernanza en la gestión urbana del agua, contribuciones metodológicas, y, finalmente, lecciones de política pública para la gestión del agua en España. Resultados sobre políticas de demanda: Como se ha desarrollado de forma más detallada en la introducción, las políticas de demanda, tanto tari…
Analysis of the process of environmental impact assessment for seawater desalination plants in Spain
2014
Desalination generates drinking water and enhances the economic, social, and environmental development of many areas with few water resources, such as parts of the Middle East, North Africa, and southern Europe (such as Spain and Cyprus). Desalination plants may cause environmental impacts in coastal areas and so it is necessary to submit plans for new plants to a process of environmental impact assessment (EIA) in order to achieve more environmentally viable projects, meaning: optimal locations; appropriately used systems and technologies; effective preventive, compensatory, and corrective measures; and social and environmental acceptance. This article contains a study of the process of en…
A satellite stand-alone procedure for deriving net radiation by using SEVIRI and MODIS products
2018
Abstract In this study, a new stand-alone satellite approach for the estimation of net surface radiation (Rn) has been implemented and validated for the Italian territory. The method uses the MODIS and MSG-SEVIRI time series products and it is independent of the use of ancillary data (i.e. ground measurements). A database of daily measurements of Rn, provided by 9 stations of the FLUXNET network, was used to validate the method in different ecological scenarios in the period 2010-12. The Rn modelled by the proposed approach and the corresponding FLUXNET measurements were in good agreement, with RMSE and R2 of 19.8 Wm−2 and 0.87, respectively, at 8-days scale, and 23.3 Wm−2 and 0.92, respect…
GIS-based groundwater potential mapping in Shahroud plain, Iran. A comparison among statistical (bivariate and multivariate), data mining and MCDM ap…
2019
Abstract In arid and semi-arid areas, groundwater resource is one of the most important water sources by the humankind. Knowledge of groundwater distribution over space, associated flow and basic exploitation measures can play a significant role in planning sustainable development, especially in arid and semi-arid areas. Groundwater potential mapping (GWPM) fits in this context as the tool used to predict the spatial distribution of groundwater. In this research we tested four GIS-based models for GWPM, consisting of: i) random forest (RF); ii) weight of evidence (WoE); iii) binary logistic regression (BLR); and iv) technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) mul…
Special Issue: Water Management Strategies in Irrigated Areas
2016
The 2015 edition of the United Nations World Water Development Report highlighted that ‘water is at the core of sustainable development’. Water has upgraded the quality of human life, and any progress to achieve a more sustainable world will deal with the maintenance and/or the improvement of water management. Water demand has grown at more than twice the population rate in the XX century. By 2025, it is estimated that about 1.8 billion people will live in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions.
Metagenomic insights into strategies of aerobic and anaerobic carbon and nitrogen transformation in boreal lakes
2015
Thousands of net-heterotrophic and strongly stratifying lakes dominate the boreal landscape. Besides their central role as emitters of greenhouse gases, we have only recently begun to understand the microbial systems driving the metabolic processes and elemental cycles in these lakes. Using shotgun metagenomics, we show that the functional potential differs among lake types, with humic lakes being particularly enriched in carbon degradation genes. Most of the metabolic pathways exhibit oxygen- and temperature-dependent stratification over depth, coinciding with shifts in bacterial community composition, implying that stratification is a major factor controlling lake metabolism. In the botto…