Modelling stream flow and quantifying blue water using modified STREAM model in the Upper Pangani River Basin, Eastern Africa

Effective management of all water uses in a river basin requires spatially distributed information of evaporative water use and the link towards the river flows. Physically based spatially distributed models are often used to generate this kind of information. These models require enormous amounts of data, if not sufficient would result in equifinality. In addition, hydrological models often focus on natural processes and fail to account for water usage. This study presents a spatially distributed hydrological model that has been developed for a heterogeneous, highly utilized and data scarce river basin in Eastern Africa. Using an innovative approach, remote sensing derived evapotranspiration and soil moisture variables for three years were incorporated as input data in the model conceptualization of the STREAM model (Spatial Tools for River basin Environmental Analysis and Management). To cater for the extensive irrigation water application, an additional blue water component was incorporated in the STREAM model to quantify irrigation water use (ETb(I)). To enhance model parameter identification and calibration, three hydrological landscapes (wetlands, hill-slope and snowmelt) were identified using field data. The model was calibrated against discharge data from five gauging stations and showed considerably good performance especially in the simulation of low flows where the Nash–Sutcliffe Efficiency of the natural logarithm (Eln) of discharge were greater than 0.6 in both calibration and validation periods. At the outlet, the Eln coefficient was even higher (0.90). During low flows, ETb(I) consumed nearly 50% of the river flow in the river basin. ETb(I) model result was comparable to the field based net irrigation estimates with less than 20% difference. These results show the great potential of developing spatially distributed models that can account for supplementary water use. Such information is important for water resources planning and management in heavily utilized catchment areas. Model flexibility offers the opportunity for continuous model improvement when more data become available.Water ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Impacts of conservation tillage on the hydrological and agronomic performance of Fanya juus in the upper Blue Nile (Abbay) river basin

Adoption of soil conservation structures (SCS) has been low in high rainfall areas of Ethiopia mainly due to crop yield reduction, increased soil erosion following breaching of SCS, incompatibility with the tradition of cross plowing and water-logging behind SCS. A new type of conservation tillage (CT) involving contour plowing and the construction of invisible subsoil barriers using a modified Maresha winged "subsoiler" is suggested as a means to tackle these problems as an integral part of the SCS. We investigated the effect of integrating the CT with SCS on the surface runoff, water-logging, soil loss, crop yield and plowing convenience. The new approach of conservation tillage has been compared with traditional tillage (TT) on 5 farmers' fields in a high rainfall area in the upper Blue Nile (Abbay) river basin. Test crops were wheat [triticum vulgare] and tef [eragrostis tef]. Farmers found CT convenient to apply between SCS. Surface runoff appeared to be reduced under CT by 48 and 15%, for wheat and tef, respectively. As a result, CT reduced sediment yield by 51 and 9.5%, for wheat and tef, respectively. Significantly reduced water-logging was observed behind SCS in CT compared to TT. Grain yields of wheat and tef increased by 35 and 10%, respectively, although the differences were not statistically significant apparently due to high fertility variations among fields of participating farmers. Farmers who tested CT indicated that they will continue this practice in the future.Water ManagementCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Water balance modeling of Upper Blue Nile catchments using a top-down approach

The water balances of twenty catchments in the Upper Blue Nile basin have been analyzed using a top-down modeling approach based on Budyko’s hypotheses. The objective of this study is to obtain better understanding of water balance dynamics of upper Blue Nile catchments on annual and monthly time scales and on a spatial scale of meso scale to large scale. The water balance analysis using a Budykotype curve at annual scale reveals that the aridity index does not exert a first order control in most of the catchments. This implies the need to increase model complexity to monthly time scale to include the effects of seasonal soil moisture dynamics. The dynamic water balance model used in this study predicts the direct runoff and other processes based on the limit concept; i.e. for dry environments since rainfall amount is small, the aridity index approaches to infinity or equivalently evaporation approaches rainfall and for wet environments where the rainfall amount is large, the aridity index approaches to zero and actual evaporation approaches the potential evaporation. The uncertainty of model parameters has been assessed using the GLUE (Generalized Likelihood Uncertainty Estimation) methodology. The results show that the majority of the parameters are reasonably well identifiable. However, the baseflow recession constant was poorly identifiable. Parameter uncertainty and model structural errors could be the reason for the poorly identifiable parameter. Moreover, a multi-objective model calibration strategy has been employed to emphasize the different aspects of the hydrographs on low and high flows. The model has been calibrated and validated against observed streamflow time series and it shows good performance for the twenty study catchments in the upper Blue Nile. During the calibration period (1995–2000) the Nash and Sutcliffe efficiency (ENS) for monthly flow prediction varied between 0.52 to 0.93 (dominated by high flows), while it varied between 0.32 to 0.90 using logarithms of flow series (indicating the goodness of low flow simulations). The model is parsimonious and it is suggested that the calibrated parameters could be used after some more regionalization efforts to predict monthly stream flows in ungauged catchments of the Upper Blue Nile basin, which is the vast majority of catchments in that regionCivil Engineering and Geoscience

Landscape Approach Greater Bay Area, China: Landscape architecture explorations in the Pearl River Delta, Beijing and Jakarta through eight MSc-graduation projects

This publication presents the results of a design lab that explores landscape-based design approaches for adaptive urban transformation in fast urbanizing deltas. While using design as a research strategy landscape architecture principles are explored that ensure water safety and inclusive socio-ecological design. The projects as presented here explore water resilient industrial transformation, flood protection, socio-spatial integration and the reintegration of urban villages in the Pearl River Delta. There are also two sheer projects with similar approach applied in Beijing and Jakarta. This lab is connected to the NWO-NSFC-EPSRC funded project ‘Adaptive Urban Transformation’ and a collaboration of Delft University of Technology, South China University of Technology and The University of Sheffield. The lab contributes to the project with design workshop participation, MSc-thesis and publications. www.adaptiveurbantransformation.comLandscape Architectur

Estimation of ⁹⁹Mo production rates from natural molybdenum in research reactors

Molybdenum-99 is one of the most important radionuclides for medical diagnostics. In 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency organized a round-robin exercise where the participants measured and calculated specific saturation activities achievable for the 98Mo(n,γ)99Mo reaction. This reaction is of interest as a means to locally, and on a small scale, produce 99Mo from natural molybdenum. The current paper summarises a set of experimental results and reviews the methodology for calculating the corresponding saturation activities. Activation by epithermal neutrons and also epithermal neutron self-shielding are found to be of high importance in this case.RST/Applied Radiation & Isotope