Monitoring Economic and Social Changes within NSW Water Sharing Plan Areas: A Participatory Approach

This paper presents a participatory approach being used to monitor the changes in economic and social indicators within the Water Sharing Plan areas in NSW. The approach entails close cooperation and input from the stakeholders comprising engagement and scoping; profiling, literature review and media scanning; indicators selection; data collection; and analysis and reporting over time. The monitoring data on the key economic and social indicators will be used for review of the Water Sharing Plans as well as further refinement and development of water policies in NSW. This framework provides the basis for developing similar monitoring programs.Monitoring, Irrigation Industry, Water Sharing Plans, Economic and Social Indicators, Methodology, Participatory Approach, Land Economics/Use, Research Methods/ Statistical Methods,

Economic impacts of NSW water sharing plan rules on irrigated agriculture: a case study of Coopers Creek

A water sharing plan is a legal document prepared under the Water Management Act 2000 (WMA) in New South Wales (NSW). It establishes the rules for sharing water between the environment and entitlement holders, with the goal of simultaneously protecting water dependant ecosystems and providing certainty for water users. In NSW 49 water sharing plans have commenced to date and another 40 plans are due to be commenced within next two years covering all surface and groundwater systems. The WMA requires that due consideration be given to the socio-economic impacts of the water sharing rules during preparation and mid-term reviews of the plans. This paper presents the framework used to undertake socio-economic assessment of the impacts of water sharing rules and a case study of impact assessment. The NSW Office of Water (the Office) has used a staged methodological framework that is consistent with the socio-economic assessment guidelines for river, groundwater and water management committees developed by the Independent Advisory Committee on Socio-economic Analysis (IACSEA 1998). This framework is simple, relevant and cost effective. The case study presents socio-economic impact assessment of water sharing rules of the Coopers Creek Water Sharing Plan that commenced in 2004. The results of the case study indicate that the proposed rules could have significant negative or positive impacts on regional irrigated production and employment. This shows that proposals for environmental gains may result in substantial economic losses to the irrigators.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

NSW Great Artesian Basin water market assessment pre and post auction

The NSW Cap & Pipe the Bores Program is a jointly funded Commonwealth and State initiative that operates within the Australian Government's Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative framework. Under the Water Sharing Plan for the NSW Great Artesian Basin Groundwater Sources 2008, 70 per cent of the water savings made since 1999 shall be retained in the aquifers of the Basin to improve pressures and provide for groundwater dependent ecosystems. The remaining 30 per cent of the water savings may be released to extractive users over the term of the Water Sharing Plan to facilitate the continued economic and social welfare of regional western NSW. As the first step in this water release, part of the water savings from the Cap & Pipe the Bores program were auctioned in July 2009 in the western NSW town of Walgett. All lots offered at auction were sold. The study reviews the pre auction analysis of demand, and outlines the auction process and outcomes as well as the implications for future water sales. The outcomes of the auction will inform ongoing water allocation policy.water auction, economics, Great Artesian Basin, groundwater, Cap & Pipe the Bores, Water Sharing Plan., Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Economic analysis of landholder water management under Cap & Pipe the Bores program: case studies in the NSW Great Artesian Basin

The NSW Cap & Pipe the Bores Program is a jointly funded Commonwealth and State initiative that operates within the Australian Government’s Great Artesian Basin Sustainability Initiative (GABSI) framework. The third five-year period of GABSI was due to commence on 1st July 2009. This economic study of changes in landholder water management under the Cap & Pipe the Bores program was undertaken to inform the development of GABSI phase 3 policy in NSW. The study consisted of a small number of case studies of farming enterprises across the Great Artesian Basin Groundwater Management Zones of Surat South, Surat East, Surat West, Warrego and Central in NSW. The apparent landholder economic feasibility of the program was dependent on individual farm characteristics as much as location to the bore and geographic location within the GAB.Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Quantitative analysis of incorrectly-configured bogon-filter detection

Copyright © 2008 IEEENewly announced IP addresses (from previously unused IP blocks) are often unreachable. It is common for network operators to filter out address space which is known to be unallocated (“bogon” addresses). However, as allocated address space changes over time, these bogons might become legitimately announced prefixes. Unfortunately, some ISPs still do not configure their bogon filters via lists published by the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs). Instead, they choose to manually configure filters. Therefore it would be desirable to test whether filters block legitimate address space before it is allocated to ISPs and/or end users. Previous work has presented a methodology that aims at detecting such wrongly configured filters, so that ISPs can be contacted and asked to update their filters. This paper extends the methodology by providing a more formal algorithm for finding such filters, and the paper quantitatively assesses the performance of this methodology.Jon Arnold, Olaf Maennel, Ashley Flavel, Jeremy McMahon, Matthew Rougha

A Dual Isotope Protocol to Separate the Contributions to Phosphorus Content of Maize Shoots and Soil Phosphorus Fractions from Biosolids, Fertilizer and Soil

Separation of the phosphorus (P) contributions from soil, fertilizer and biosolids to plants has not been possible without the aid of radioisotopes. Dual labelling of soil with 32P and fertilizer with 33P isotopes has been used to partition the sources of P in maize (Zea mays) shoots and in soil P pools. Biosolids containing 4.1% P that had been prepared using Fe and Al were applied to a Kurosol soil from Goulburn, NSW, Australia. The biosolids were applied at five rates up to 60 dry t/ha with and without P fertilizer. Phosphorus derived from fertilizer was determined directly with 33P and that from soil by 32P reverse dilution. Phosphorus derived from biosolids was estimated as the difference between total P and that derived from the soil plus fertilizer calculated from isotope data. Yield and P content of maize shoots increased linearly with the rate of biosolids application. The proportion of P in the plant derived from biosolids also increased with application rate up to 88% for the soil receiving biosolids at 60 dry t/ha with no fertilizer. The corresponding value with fertilizer applied at 80 kg P/ha was 69%. The proportion of P in the maize shoots derived from soil and fertilizer decreased as biosolids application rate increased. Soil total P, bicarbonate extractable P, Al-P, Fe-P and Ca-P increased with biosolids application rate. The increase in plant P uptake and in bicarbonate extractable P in the soil shows that biosolids P provides a readily available source of P. A decrease in uptake of fertilizer and soil P with increasing biosolids application is attributed to the decrease in the proportion of P from these sources in the total pool of available P, rather than to immobilization of P by Fe and Al in the biosolids

Preferential phosphorus placement improves the productivity and competitiveness of tropical pasture legumes

Extensive grazing systems often receive minimal fertiliser due to the risk associated with using relatively expensive inputs. Nevertheless, nutrient applications are known to improve pasture productivity, and the benefit of applying fertiliser is being more widely accepted. Two tropical pasture mixes (Digit/Desmanthus and Rhodes/Centro) were established in plastic boxes containing phosphorus (P) responsive soil to investigate shoot yield and P fertiliser recovery. The grasses and legumes were planted in separate rows, and three P treatments were applied along with the seed ('BOTH low-P' had 2kg P ha−1 banded below both components, 'BOTH high-P' had 12kg P ha−1 banded below both components and 'LEGUME superhigh-P' had 12kg P ha−1 banded below the legume only). The P applied below the legumes was labelled with 32P-radioisotope tracer. When P fertiliser was applied below both components, the grasses consistently out-yielded the legumes (avg. legume content=29%). Preferential fertiliser application below the legumes increased the average legume content of the two pasture mixes to 66%. Legume tissue P derived from applied P fertiliser increased from 20% to 77% as the P application rate was increased. However, total recovery of applied P by the legumes was relatively low in each of the treatments (≤7% of applied P). These collective results demonstrate that a preferential application of P fertiliser can benefit legume productivity, with applied P being a significant proportion of plant tissue P. Although only a small proportion of applied P was recovered within the seven-week growth period, it is expected that this fertiliser application at planting will remain beneficial for a large proportion of the growing season following pasture establishment

Phosphorus bioavailability in soil profiles of a long-term fertilizer experiment: The evaluation of their bioaccessibility

Global agricultural productivity depends on the use of finite phosphorus (P) resources of which not only the topsoil, but also subsoil, can hold immense reserves. To assess potential soil contribution to plant nutrition, we compared the P status of Stagnic Cambisol profiles in experimental plots that received different P fertilizer applications (control, triple superphosphate (TSP), compost, compost+TSP) for 16 years. Sequential fractionation was combined with P K-edge X-ray absorption near edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy to identify the chemical P speciation. Fertilized topsoils (21 to 69 kg P ha-1 a-1) showed P reserves larger by a factor of 1.2 to 1.4, and subsoil P reserves larger by a factor of 1.3 to 1.5 than those of the control. P-XANES revealed the predominance of inorganic P species such as moderately labile Fe- (46 to 92%), Al- (0 to 40%), and Ca- (0 to 15%) P compounds besides organic P (0 to 13%) in all treatments. The fertilizer application slightly altered P speciation throughout the profiles, but the type of fertilizer had no significant effect on it. Optimal plant growth requirements are restricted by the exchangeable P from the solid phase within the soil solution. Therefore, ongoing research focuses on the accessibility of P from P loaded amorphous Fe- and Al-hydroxides, previously identified as the predominant abiotic P forms. To assess their P desorption potential, P-33 rhizotron experiments combined with P-33 isotopic exchange kinetics (IEK) are underway. Preliminary results indicated that besides differences in P binding capacity of soil hydroxides, physical soil parameters, such as the matric potential, strongly control soil P availability, thus plant P acquisition rates can vary among different soil types. Our results gained new detailed information about P bioavailability under agricultural practice. The investigations towards P bioaccessibility may contribute to improved interpretation of soil P tests and reduced fertilizer recommendations

Taming Anycast in a Wild Internet

Anycast is a popular tool for deploying global, widely available systems, including DNS infrastructure and content delivery networks (CDNs). The optimization of these networks often focuses on the deployment and management of anycast sites. However, such approaches fail to consider one of the primary configurations of a large anycast network: the set of networks that receive anycast announcements at each site (i.e., an announcement configuration). Altering these configurations, even without the deployment of additional sites, can have profound impacts on both anycast site selection and round-trip times. In this study, we explore the operation and optimization of any-cast networks through the lens of deployments that have a large number of upstream service providers. We demonstrate that these many-provider anycast networks exhibit fundamentally different properties when interacting with the Internet, having a greater number of single AS hop paths and reduced dependency on each provider, compared with few-provider networks. We further examine the impact of announcement configuration changes, demonstrating that in nearly 30% of vantage point groups, round-trip time performance can be improved by more than 25%, solely by manipulating which providers receive anycast announcements. Finally, we propose DailyCatch, an empirical measurement methodology for testing and validating announcement configuration changes, and demonstrate its ability to influence user-experienced performance on a global anycast CDN