The Extended Water Footprint and illegal groundwater use in the Upper Guadiana Basin (Spain)

Tablas de Daimiel National Park is located in the Upper Guadiana Basin and represents one of the largest and most important wetlands in Europe. The long term ecological integrity of this wetland is inherently associated with the maintenance of a shallow groundwater table, namely the Western Mancha aquifer (WMA) or Aquifer 23. The intensive use of groundwater, mainly for irrigation, has led over the last decades to deep socio‐economic changes. Such intensive use has also lowered the water table of Aquifer 23, drastically reducing the flooded area of the wetland and threatening its ecological integrity. A number of plans and measures have been developed and implemented since the declaration of overexploitation of Aquifer 23 in the year 1987. The most recent one is the Special Plan for the Upper Guadiana (SPUG), approved in 2008. This Plan is the main measure to comply with achieving the objective of good quantitative and qualitative status required under the Water Framework Directive (2000). This paper offers a new type of integrated analysis which allows assessing under a common lens the physical, economic and social dimensions of groundwater use in the area. The first objective is to calculate the groundwater footprint of agricultural production in the Upper Guadiana basin and its evolution during 2000‐2008. For this purpose, we have applied the Extended Water Footprint (EWF) methodology ‐a novel approach based on the classical Water Footprint (WF) approach‐ that includes an assessment of the water productivity from an economic and social perspective. Compared to the classical WF, the EWF allows for a more complete overview of the sector, providing new insights for policy decisions (e.g. to define options and possibilities on water re‐allocation in order to achieve both better ecosystem conservation and social equity). The second objective is to use the EWF to compare the existing authorized and non‐authorized or illegal use of water. This allows us to discuss current initiatives by public authorities in relation to the existing frame of water right

Public participation and transparency in water management

Public participation is considered broadly to have a positive impact on the quality of governance. Transparency is the first step in the public participation ladder since it implies that people have access to the necessary information to make informed contributions to decision-making. This chapter gives an overview of the main challenges for the Spanish water sector in terms of public participation in the water planning process of the Water Framework Directive (WFD), and presents results of an assessment of the information transparency of the Spanish water authorities. Although the WFD has contributed to improving the situation, in Spain the tradition of public accessibility to data and public participation in water management decisions is still rather poor. In addition to making all relevant information publicly available, the most compelling challenge is possibly ensuring its reliability and consistency. Another key issue is making the information accessible to different target audiences by adapting it to their level of interest and technical capacit

Precision Measurements of the Cluster Red Sequence using an Error Corrected Gaussian Mixture Model

The red sequence is an important feature of galaxy clusters and plays a crucial role in optical cluster detection. Measurement of the slope and scatter of the red sequence are affected both by selection of red sequence galaxies and measurement errors. In this paper, we describe a new error corrected Gaussian Mixture Model for red sequence galaxy identification. Using this technique, we can remove the effects of measurement error and extract unbiased information about the intrinsic properties of the red sequence. We use this method to select red sequence galaxies in each of the 13,823 clusters in the maxBCG catalog, and measure the red sequence ridgeline location and scatter of each. These measurements provide precise constraints on the variation of the average red galaxy populations in the observed frame with redshift. We find that the scatter of the red sequence ridgeline increases mildly with redshift, and that the slope decreases with redshift. We also observe that the slope does not strongly depend on cluster richness. Using similar methods, we show that this behavior is mirrored in a spectroscopic sample of field galaxies, further emphasizing that ridgeline properties are independent of environment.Comment: 33 pages, 14 Figures; A typo in Eq.A11 is fixed. The C++/Python codes for ECGMM can be downloaded from: https://sites.google.com/site/jiangangecgmm

Multi-object spectroscopy of low redshift EIS clusters. III. Properties of optically selected clusters

We have carried out an investigation of the properties of low redshift EIS clusters using both spectroscopy and imaging data. We present new redshifts for 738 galaxies in 21 ESO Imaging Survey (EIS) Cluster fields. We use the ``gap''-technique to search for significant overdensities in redshift space and to identify groups/clusters of galaxies corresponding to the original EIS matched filter cluster candidates. In this way we spectroscopically confirm 20 of the 21 cluster candidates with a matched-filter estimated redshift z_MF=0.2. We have now obtained spectroscopic redshifts for 34 EIS cluster candidates with z_MF=0.2 (see also Hansen et al., 2002; Olsen et al., 2003). Of those we spectroscopically confirm 32 with redshifts ranging from z=0.064 to 0.283. We find that: 1) the velocity dispersions of the systems range from sigma_v<=130km/s to sigma_v=1200km/s, typical of galaxy groups to rich clusters; 2) richnesses corresponding to Abell classes R<=1; and 3) concentration indices ranging from C=0.2 to C=1.2. From the analysis of the colours of the galaxy populations we find that 53% of the spectroscopically confirmed systems have a ``significant'' red sequence. These systems are on average richer and have higher velocity dispersions. We find that the colour of the red sequence galaxies matches passive stellar evolution predictions.Comment: 24 pages, accepted for publication in A&

Can Microsoft Academic be used for citation analysis of preprint archives? The case of the Social Science Research Network

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Springer in Scientometrics on 07/03/2018, available online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11192-018-2704-z The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Preprint archives play an important scholarly communication role within some fields. The impact of archives and individual preprints are difficult to analyse because online repositories are not indexed by the Web of Science or Scopus. In response, this article assesses whether the new Microsoft Academic can be used for citation analysis of preprint archives, focusing on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Although Microsoft Academic seems to index SSRN comprehensively, it groups a small fraction of SSRN papers into an easily retrievable set that has variations in character over time, making any field normalisation or citation comparisons untrustworthy. A brief parallel analysis of arXiv suggests that similar results would occur for other online repositories. Systematic analyses of preprint archives are nevertheless possible with Microsoft Academic when complete lists of archive publications are available from other sources because of its promising coverage and citation results

Spectroscopic hint of a cold stream in the direction of the globular cluster NGC 1851

We present the results of a spectroscopic survey performed in the outskirts of the globular cluster NGC1851 with VIMOS@VLT. The radial velocities of 107 stars in a region between 12' and 33' around the cluster have been derived. We clearly identify the cluster stellar population over the entire field of view, indicating the presence of a significant fraction of stars outside the tidal radius predicted by King models. We also find tentative evidence of a cold (sigma_v< 20 km/s) peak in the distribution of velocities at v_r~180 km/s constituted mainly by Main Sequence stars whose location in the color-magnitude diagram is compatible with a stream at a similar distance of this cluster. If confirmed, this evidence would strongly support the extra-Galactic origin of this feature.Comment: 8 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication by MNRA

Candidate high-z proto-clusters among the Planck compact sources, as revealed by Herschel-SPIRE

By determining the nature of all the Planck compact sources within 808.4 deg2 of large Herschel surveys, we have identified 27 candidate proto-clusters of dusty star forming galaxies (DSFGs) that are at least 3σ overdense in either 250, 350 or 500 μm sources. We find roughly half of all the Planck compact sources are resolved by Herschel into multiple discrete objects, with the other half remaining unresolved by Herschel. We find a significant difference between versions of the Planck catalogues, with earlier releases hosting a larger fraction of candidate proto-clusters and Galactic Cirrus than later releases, which we ascribe to a difference in the filters used in the creation of the three catalogues. We find a surface density of DSFG candidate proto-clusters of (3.3 ± 0.7) × 10−2 sources deg−2, in good agreement with previous similar studies. We find that a Planck colour selection of S857/S545 1. Our candidate proto-clusters are a factor of 5 times brighter at 353 GHz than expected from simulations, even in the most conservative estimates. Further observations are needed to confirm whether these candidate proto-clusters are physical clusters, multiple proto-clusters along the line of sight, or chance alignments of unassociated sources