A Primer for Monitoring Water Funds

This document is intended to assist people working on Water Funds to understand their information needs and become familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of various monitoring approaches. This primer is not intended to make people monitoring experts, but rather to help them become familiar with and conversant in the major issues so they can communicate effectively with experts to design a scientifically defensible monitoring program.The document highlights the critical information needs common to Water Fund projects and summarizes issues and steps to address in developing a Water Fund monitoring program. It explains key concepts and challenges; suggests monitoring parameters and an array of sampling designs to consider as a starting-point; and provides suggestions for further reading, links to helpful resources,and an annotated bibliography of studies on the impacts that result from activities commonly implemented in Water Fund projects

Views from the coalface: chemo-sensors, sensor networks and the semantic sensor web

Currently millions of sensors are being deployed in sensor networks across the world. These networks generate vast quantities of heterogeneous data across various levels of spatial and temporal granularity. Sensors range from single-point in situ sensors to remote satellite sensors which can cover the globe. The semantic sensor web in principle should allow for the unification of the web with the real-word. In this position paper, we discuss the major challenges to this unification from the perspective of sensor developers (especially chemo-sensors) and integrating sensors data in real-world deployments. These challenges include: (1) identifying the quality of the data; (2) heterogeneity of data sources and data transport methods; (3) integrating data streams from different sources and modalities (esp. contextual information), and (4) pushing intelligence to the sensor level

Factors Affecting Water Management on the North Slope of Alaska

The North Slope of Alaska is undergoing sudden development following the recent discovery of large oil and gas reserves in the area. The water resources of the region should be carefully managed both to ensure adequate supplies of usable water at reasonable cost, and to guard against excessive deterioration of water quality. The likely effects on the environment of man's activities are investigated and found to be poorly understood at the present time. Research priorities are suggested to supply rapid answers to questions of immediate importance. The applicability of a regional management concept to the North Slope waters is considered and the concept is recommended as part of a broad land and water planning philosophy which would emphasize regional control over state and federal control. The use of economic incentives rather than standards for the control of water quality is not recommended at the present time.The work upon which this report is based was supported primarily by funds provided by the Sea Grant Program of the University of Alaska under grant No. 1-36109

Dairy wintering systems in southern New Zealand : quantification and modelling of nutrient transfers and losses from contrasting wintering systems : a thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Soil Science at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

Traditional dairy wintering practice in the lower South Island of New Zealand has been to graze brassica crops in situ. This practice has been under increasing scrutiny from local Regional Councils due to the relatively high nitrogen (N) leaching losses from this component of the whole farm system. Alternative wintering options to reduce N leaching losses that are currently available to farmers (such as barns and permanent wintering pads) are high cost and involve a large capital investment. In this work a new wintering system (termed a ‘portable pad’) was developed for use on support blocks (which can be located many kilometres from the milking platform) as an interim measure for reducing N leaching losses that is low cost and low input. This system is designed as a mitigation strategy that is available for use immediately while research investigates more permanent solutions. This system is a hybrid of the traditional crop grazing system and an off-paddock system, where effluent is captured. It makes use of the advantages of each of the original systems utilising the low cost feed source of the brassica crops, grazed in situ, while also utilising the benefits of duration controlled grazing with its associated effluent capture and irrigation at low rates. The aim of the research was to generate whole system N leaching loss values for each of the three farm systems investigated (crop wintering, deep-litter wintering barn, and portable pad). Field and laboratory research was conducted to fill identified knowledge gaps such that system N loss values could be estimated. OVERSEER Nutrient Budget software tool was used in conjunction with measured and modelled (APSIM) data to simulate whole farm N leaching loss values for the three farm systems investigated. Nitrogen leaching losses from the portable pad and barn systems were between 5 and 26 % and between 13 and 26 % lower, respectively, than the crop wintering system

Evaluating Drought Vulnerability of Small Community Surface Water Supply Systems in the Midwest

This report presents approaches and data availability for evaluating the drought vulnerability of small community water supply systems in the Midwest that obtain water from surface water bodies, such as rivers, streams, natural lakes, and man-made reservoirs. A description is provided of the various types of surface water sources from which 320 small community systems in the Midwest, each serving 10,000 or fewer people, obtain their water. The small community surface water system most commonly obtains its supply from one or two small impounding reservoirs. However, a substantial number of communities instead obtain their water from either direct river withdrawals or off-channel storage of water withdrawn from streams and rivers. Sixty of these 320 small community surface water systems were interviewed to gather information on the availability of data to determine the drought vulnerability of these systems. Although hydrologic and physical data exist for evaluating many of these systems, relatively few of the interviewed system managers could provide such pertinent information. A summary of selected hydrologic data is provided that can be used to determine the relative severity of major historical drought periods for various portions of the Midwest. Focus is given to historical droughts and available data for the southern portion of the Midwest where most surface water supply systems are located, comprising parts of Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio. Geographic differences in drought severity are described, as is the influence of the physical characteristics of a water supply on the “critical” drought duration that a community must consider. Basic water budget analyses of water supplies and data needs are presented. Reservoir capacity measurements and estimates of inflow are the most critical data in reliable assessment of water supply adequacy. Depending on data availability, estimation of inflows may be straightforward to highly uncertain. For water supply systems that withdraw directly from a stream or river, the existence of long-term stream gage data on that river is particularly crucial to evaluate supply adequacy, and such data for larger streams and rivers are often available. With impounding reservoirs, which are typically located on smaller streams, data for that stream may often not exist; however, data from a “surrogate” gage that is considered to be hydrologically similar are often sufficient to estimate water supply yield. Systems that use off-channel reservoirs often withdraw water from smaller streams that do not have data for accurate depiction of their yield, and these systems also appear to be the most vulnerable to severe drought conditions. Case studies are presented to provide examples of yield calculations and innovative approaches that selected small communities have undertaken for addressing drought vulnerability. The role of demand management (drought response and water conservation) in evaluating drought vulnerability is also presented. If hydrologic data and basic physical data such as storage capacity are lacking, it may be difficult for either system managers or experienced professionals to estimate a community system’s yield and potential drought impacts, particularly for off-channel reservoir and low channel dam systems. However, managers should attempt to understand the type of drought period likely to test the adequacy of the available supply and can begin recording basic system observations, such as daily withdrawal records and reservoir drawdown, in a readily-accessible form that will be useful for future evaluations.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe

Current measurements in the Salton Sea using ERTS multispectral imagery

There are no author-identified significant results in this report

Summary of Freshwater Monitoring Programs in New Hampshire\u27s Coastal Watershed, Trowbridge, P

The New Hampshire Estuaries Project (NHEP) is part of the US Environmental Protection Agency’s National Estuary Program, which is a joint local/state/federal program established under the Clean Water Act with the goal of protecting and enhancing nationally significant estuarine resources. The NHEP uses a Monitoring Plan to track changes in the estuarine environment as a result of the NHEP’s efforts. Up to this point, the Monitoring Plan has focused exclusively on conditions in the estuaries. The purpose of this report is to evaluate the feasibility of including water quality data from the freshwater portion of New Hampshire’s coastal watershed in the Monitoring Plan

Markets - Water Markets: Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin and the US Southwest

Worldwide supplies of fresh water are increasingly scarce relative to demand. This problem is likely to be exacerbated with climate change. In this paper, we examine water markets in both Australia’s Murray Darling Basin and the western US and their prospects for addressing water scarcity. The two regions share a number of important similarities including: climate variability that requires investment in reservoirs to make water available in low-rainfall periods; the need for internal and cross-border (state) water management; an historical major allocation of water to irrigators; increasing competition among different uses (agricultural, environmental and recreational in situ uses, urban demand); and the potential for water trading to more smoothly and quickly allocate water across these competing uses. A comparison of the two regions provides important insights about how economic factors can encourage more efficient water allocation, market structure and government regulation.

Electrochemical treatment of industrial sulfidic spent caustic streams for sulfide removal and caustic recovery

Alkaline spent caustic streams (SCS) produced in the petrochemical and chemical manufacturing industry, contain high concentrations of reactive sulfide (HS-) and caustic soda (NaOH). Common treatment methods entail high operational costs while not recovering the possible resources that SCS contain. Here we studied the electrochemical treatment of SCS from a chemical manufacturing industry in an electrolysis cell, aiming at anodic HS- removal and cathodic NaOH, devoid of sulfide, recovery. Using a synthetic SCS we first evaluated the HS- oxidation product distribution over time, as well as the HS- removal and the NaOH recovery, as a function of current density. In a second step, we investigated the operational aspects of such treatment for the industrial SCS, under 300 A m(-2) fixed current density. In an electrolysis cell receiving 205 +/- 60 g S L-1 d(-1) HS- over 20 days of continuous operation, HS- was removed with a 38.0 +/- 7.7 % removal and similar to 80 % coulombic efficiency, with a concomitant recovery of a similar to 12 wt.% NaOH solution. The low cell voltage obtained (1.75 +/- 0.12 V), resulted in low energy requirements of 3.7 +/- 0.6 kW h kg(-1) S and 6.3 +/- 0.4 kW h kg(-1) NaOH and suggests techno-economic viability of this process