Search results for "Water"
showing 10 items of 9348 documents
Tillage Versus No-Tillage. Soil Properties and Hydrology in an Organic Persimmon Farm in Eastern Iberian Peninsula
2020
There is an urgent need to implement environmentally friendly agriculture management practices to achieve the Sustainable Goals for Development (SDGs) of the United Nations by 2030. Mediterranean agriculture is characterized by intense and millennia-old tillage management and as a consequence degraded soil. No-Tillage has been widely examined as a solution for soil degradation but No-Tillage relies more on the application of herbicides that reduce plant cover, which in turn enhances soil erosion. However, No-Tillage with weed cover should be researched to promote organic farming and sustainable agriculture. Therefore, we compare Tillage against No-Tillage using weed cover as an alternative …
Comparative Analyses between the Zero-Inertia and Fully Dynamic Models of the Shallow Water Equations for Unsteady Overland Flow Propagation
2018
The shallow water equations are a mathematical tool widely applied for the simulation of flow routing in rivers and floodplains, as well as for flood inundation mapping. The interest of many researchers has been focused on the study of simplified forms of the original set of equations. One of the most commonly applied simplifications consists of neglecting the inertial terms. The effects of such a choice on the outputs of the simulations of flooding events are controversial and are an important topic of debate. In the present paper, two numerical models recently proposed for the solution of the complete and zero-inertia forms of the shallow water equations, are applied to several unsteady f…
Impact of Farmland Abandonment on Water Resources and Soil Conservation in Citrus Plantations in Eastern Spain
2019
Due to the reduction in the prices of oranges on the market and social changes such as the ageing of the population, traditional orange plantation abandonment in the Mediterranean is taking place. Previous research on land abandonment impact on soil and water resources has focused on rainfed agriculture abandonment, but there is no research on irrigated land abandonment. In the Valencia Region&mdash
A Cost–Benefit Based, Parametric Procedure to Screen Existing Irrigation and Municipal Supply Reservoirs for Wind Energy Storage
2018
Pumped hydro storage (PHS) is one of the more suitable energy storage technologies to provide bulk storage of intermittent renewable energy sources (RES) such as wind. Since the main limiting factors to the expansion of this mature technology are environmental and financial concerns, the use of an existing reservoir can help mitigate both types of impacts. In addition, the high number of reservoirs for municipal and irrigation supply in many areas of the world makes the idea of using PHS as a relatively diffuse, open-market, technology for RES management attractive. These arguments in favor of PHS must, however, be convincing for investors and regulators from an economic standpoint. To this…
Application of EMI and FDR Sensors to Assess the Fraction of Transpirable Soil Water over an Olive Grove
2018
Accurate soil water status measurements across spatial and temporal scales are still a challenging task, specifically at intermediate spatial (0.1–10 ha) and temporal (minutes to days) scales. Consequently, a gap in knowledge limits our understanding of the reliability of the spatial measurements and its practical applicability in agricultural water management. This paper compares the cumulative EM38 (Geonics Ltd., Mississauga, ON, Canada) response collected by placing the sensor above ground with the corresponding soil water content obtained by integrating the values measured with an FDR (frequency domain reflectometry) sensor. In two field areas, characterized by different soil clay conte…
Urban Water Pricing and Private Interests’ Lobbying in Small Rural Communities
2020
This research received funding from the LIFE programme of the European Commision [project LIFE16 ENV/ES/000196], the Regional Government of Andalusia and the European Regional Development Fund (projects P18-RT-576 and B-SEJ-018-UGR18) and the University of Granada (Plan Propio. Unidad Cientifica de Excelencia: Desigualdad, Derechos Humanos y Sostenibilidad -DEHUSO-).
Turbulence in River and Maritime Hydraulics
2018
Understanding of the role of turbulence in controlling transport processes is of paramount importance for the preservation and protection of aquatic ecosystems, the minimisation of deleterious consequences of anthropogenic activity, and the successful sustainable development of river and maritime areas. In this context, the present Special Issue collects 15 papers which provide a representation of the present understanding of turbulent processes and their effects in river and maritime environments. The presented collection of papers is not exhaustive but it allows for highlighting key priority areas and knowledge gaps in this field of research.
Artificial Neural Networks for Predicting the Water Retention Curve of Sicilian Agricultural Soils
2018
Modeling soil-water regime and solute transport in the vadose zone is strategic for estimating agricultural productivity and optimizing irrigation water management. Direct measurements of soil hydraulic properties, i.e., the water retention curve and the hydraulic conductivity function, are often expensive and time-consuming, and represent a major obstacle to the application of simulation models. As a result, there is a great interest in developing pedotransfer functions (PTFs) that predict the soil hydraulic properties from more easily measured and/or routinely surveyed soil data, such as particle size distribution, bulk density (&rho
Environmental Benefits and Economical Sustainability of Urban Wastewater Reuse for Irrigation—A Cost-Benefit Analysis of an Existing Reuse Project in…
2020
Besides benefits associated to increased water availability for irrigation, reuse projects of urban water can also provide positive environmental impacts, as they contribute to improve water quality of the receiving bodies by diverting wastewater from their outlet. This represents a typical win-win situation where significant synergies can be achieved between urban and agricultural sector, and the environment. These favorable conditions, however, do not necessarily imply that water reuse is either feasible from an economic perspective nor that the underlying supply chain is going to be triggered, if certain conditions are not met. Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is considered a sound, theoretic…
Enhancing a Transition to a Circular Economy in the Water Sector: The EU Project WIDER UPTAKE
2021
A novel approach for resource recovery includes forward osmosis (FO) as a concentration step in municipal wastewater treatment. The current study investigates different pre-treatment strategies including biological treatment with a moving-bed bioreactor (MBBR) at different loading rates and particle removal by filtration and sedimentation. Membrane performance and recovery potential for energy and nutrients were investigated in laboratory-scale FO experiments in batch mode using pre-treated municipal wastewater as feed and 35 g/L NaCl as a draw solution. Initial water fluxes were in the range of 6.3 to 8.0 L/(m2·h). The baseline fluxes were modelled to account for flux decline due to concen…