Evaluation of Bayesian Networks in Participatory Water Resources Management, Upper Guadiana Basin, Spain

Stakeholder participation is becoming increasingly important in water resources management. In participatory processes, stakeholders contribute by putting forward their own perspective, and they benefit by enhancing their understanding of the factors involved in decision making. A diversity of modeling tools can be used to facilitate participatory processes. Bayesian networks are well suited to this task for a variety of reasons, including their ability to structure discussions and visual appeal. This research focuses on developing and testing a set of evaluation criteria for public participation. The advantages and limitations of these criteria are discussed in the light of a specific participatory modeling initiative. Modeling work was conducted in the Upper Guadiana Basin in central Spain, where uncontrolled groundwater extraction is responsible for wetland degradation and conflicts between farmers, water authorities, and environmentalists. Finding adequate solutions to the problem is urgent because the implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive requires all aquatic ecosystems to be in a “good ecological state” within a relatively short time frame. Stakeholder evaluation highlights the potential of Bayesian networks to support public participation processes

Application of Bayesian Networks to the Upper Guadiana Basin

The need for more stakeholder participation is becoming increasingly important in natural resource management and for water resources in particular. There are a number of methods to facilitate the participatory process but in many cases the quality of these methods is difficult to evaluate because of the lack of appropriate benchmarks. Therefore there is a need of researches evaluating participatory process with clear evaluation criteria. This paper describes the development of a participatory decision support system based on Bayesian networks (Bns) and evaluates the implementation of the methodology using selected criteria. The work has been conducted in the Upper Guadiana Basin (UGB) in central Spain, a site of serious water management conflict, where groundwater-based irrigation is the main water consumer, accounting for 95% of the total uses. The uncontrolled exploitation of groundwater resources along several decades has led to an important environmental degradation and significant conflicts among stakeholder groups. The need to find solutions is becoming more urgent since the implementation of the Water Framework requires a good state of water ecosystems in the short term. The participatory building of Bayesian networks was lead to three-fold objectives: (1) To develop a DSS in the UGB, which allows the impacts of different water management options on the groundwater levels and agricultural economy to be evaluated. (2) To improve the knowledge of key water users and provide a platform for dialogue among stakeholders. (3) To evaluate the ability of Bns to provide support in complex conflict situations and as a means to more effectively engage stakeholders in the decision making process. The results obtained show that, in this context, the elaboration of a Bayesian network requires simplification of the problem, which helps stakeholders to understand the elements involved in the problem and the relationships among them. In addition to this, Bayesian networks have proved to be a good tool to deal with stakeholder participation, due to their defined structured elaboration process

A Case Study of Geometric Modelling via 3-D Point Interpolation for the Bathymetry of the Rabasa Lakes (Alicante, Spain)

The interpolation of points by means of Information Technology programs appears as a technical tool of some relevancy in the hydrogeology in general and in the study of the humid zones in particular. Our approach has been the determination of the 3-D geometry of the humid zones of major depth of the Rabasa Lakes. To estimate the topography of the lake bed, we proceed to acquire information in the field by means of sonar and GPS equipment. A total of 335 points were measured both on the perimeter and in the lake bed. In a second stage, this information was used in a kriging program to obtain the bathymetry of the wetland. This methodology is demonstrated as one of the most reliable and cost-efficient for the 3-D analysis of this type of water masses. The bathymetric study of the zone allows us to characterize the mid- and long-term hydrological evolution of the lakes by means of depth-area-volume curves

Evaluating ecosystem services and drivers of change in Spanish groundwater-related wetlands included in the Ramsar Convention

There are 74 wetlands in Spain, most of which are groundwater-related, included in the Ramsar Convention. This means that groundwater is one of several components involved in how these wetlands function. This paper analyses the ecosystem services provided by 59 groundwater-related Ramsar wetlands, and this assessment is both of the services provided by the wetlands and of the impact of drivers of change. The results show that a significant number of ecosystem services are provided at a high level, in contrast to the large number of services identified as non-existent or the small number of services identified as unknown. The trend of the ecosystem services evolution is shown to be predominantly continuing. Thus, in the majority of the ecosystem services assessed there is no change in performance level. Comparing the impact level of the seven main types of drivers of change considered in this research, non-existent is the most frequently reported result for almost all drivers. Nevertheless, these results do not reflect the current reality as they highlight the need to improve the basic data to achieve a satisfactory understanding of the interactions between wetlands-groundwater-human wellbeing, which are crucially important for the conservation, management and valuation of this natural capital

Bayesian belief networks as a tool for participatory integrated assessment and adaptive groundwater management: the Upper Guadiana Basin, Spain

Las Tablas de Daimiel, together with other wetlands in La Mancha, Spain, situated in the Upper Guadiana Basin (Fig. 1), has been catalogued as a Biosphere Reserve Area since 1981 as part of the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere programme. Between the mid-1970s and late 1980s, over 150 000 hectares of new irrigation areas were established, mainly as a result of private initiative. The average recharge rate of groundwater in the western La Mancha aquifer in the Upper Guadiana Basin is estimated to be between 200 and 500 million m3 per year, in dry and wet years respectively. Recharge also depends on the depth of the water table (Martínez-Cortina & Cruces 2003). Abstraction reached 600 million m3 per year by the end of the 1980s. Up to this time a total of 3000–5000 million m3 of the Upper Guadiana Basin aquifer’s water reserves was withdrawn (Bromley et al. 2000; Lopéz-Geta et al. 2006). The intensive use of groundwater has been a main factor for the improvement of the social and economic situation in this region, with a population of about half a million people, and where the agricultural sector is very important (Llamas et al. 2006). Water-table drawdown due to the intensive abstraction of groundwater for irrigation has caused severe negative impacts on wetlands, streams and rivers, and has resulted in a lowering of groundwater levels by up to 50 m. The main conflicts in the area are between farmers and conservationists, between central, regional and local government water agencies, and between small farmers and big farmers. The conflicts began about three decades ago (Llamas 1988) and have not yet been settled. In 2001 the Spanish Parliament asked the Government to present a hydrological plan for the Upper Guadiana Basin within one year. More than 20 draft proposals have been presented, the last one in 2006 with a budget of almost four billion Euros. This proposal has been met with strong opposition from most farmer lobbies. The Guadiana Basin is one of seven trans-boundary case studies of the EU NeWater research project (New Approaches for Adaptive Water Management under Uncertainty). The principal water-management issues in the project are addressed by adaptive and integrated water-resource manage ment. This includes uncertainty and risk mitigation, governance, crosssectoral integration, scale analysis, information management, stakeholder participation, financial aspects, system resilience and vulnerability. One work block in the NeWater project has the task of translating research outputs into tools for practitioners and end-users. As part of this effort, Bayesian belief networks (Bns) were selected as one possible tool to be developed as an aid to stakeholder participation in integrated assessment of gaps, being a suitable tool for dialogue in order to identify gaps in water-resource management functions, gaps to meet the goals of the EU Water Framework Directive and to analyse management potentials and constraints. The purpose of this paper is to describe the testing of Bns as a tool for participatory integrated assessment and adaptive and integrated water-resource management in the Upper Guadiana Basin

La percepción de los humedales en la literatura española. Una aproximación al Siglo de Oro español

The Spanish territory is dotted with numerous wetlands, which have left their imprint on literary works of great writers. In this work, is made a study of the different perceptions that the Spanish Golden Century’s society had of the wetlands, through the Topographic relations of the towns of Spain, made of order of Felipe II, and of the works of the greatest Spanish writers of that period.El territorio español se encuentra salpicado de numerosos humedales, que han dejado su impronta en obras literarias de grandes escritores. En este trabajo se hace un estudio de las distintas percepciones que tenía la sociedad española de los humedales en el Siglo de Oro español, a través de las Relaciones topográficas de los pueblos de España, hechas de orden de Felipe II, y de las obras de los más grandes literatos españoles de ese período

Bayesian networks in environmental and resource management

This overview article for the special series “Bayesian Networks in Environmental and Resource Management” reviews 7 case study articles with the aim to compare Bayesian network (BN) applications to different environmental and resource management problems from around the world. The article discusses advances in the last decade in the use of BNs as applied to environmental and resource management. We highlight progress in computational methods, best-practices for model design and model communication. We review several research challenges to the use of BNs in environmental and resource management that we think may find a solution in the near future with further research attention