Robbing Yadullah’s water to irrigate Saeid’s garden: hydrology and water rights in a village of Central Iran

Water allocation / Water rights / Irrigation management / Drought / Wells / Dams / Canals / Legal aspects / Villages / Iran / Zayandeh Rud Basin / Jalalabad / Najafabad

State regulations in groundwater management : they bark but do they bite ?

Because of the logics of both colonization or de-colonization, the need to counter the anarchy of groundwater use, or the dissemination of global 'best practices' of IWRM, states have often assumed full ownership or custody of groundwater. Regulating groundwater use includes giving drilling and abstraction authorizations/licenses, establishing an inventory of wells and reducing use in existing wells. Although laws and regulations look neat and straightforward on paper, registration, regularization, and metering have been bedeviled by a host of logistical nightmares, policy contradictions, legal challenges, and vested private interests. The overall outlook is bleak and questions the overstating of state power in reordering groundwater use. Co-management with users, while in itself not sufficient to ensure success, often arises as a possible way out of the failure of state control

Pitcairn before the mutineers: Revisiting the isolation of a Polynesian Island

The myth of Pitcairn, building on the destiny of the Bounty mutineers, focuses on the recent history of this island as the epitome of marginality and isolation. Human occupation of the island, however, occurred long before the Bounty settlement, and Pitcairn provides a fascinating example of Polynesian sustainability that is little known to the general public. Located at the eastern fringe of Central Eastern Polynesia, the Pitcairn group includes the volcanic island of Pitcairn (4.5 square kilometres), the elevated limestone island of Henderson (37.2 square kilometres) and the two small atolls of Oeno and Ducie (Figure 2.1). Situated approximately 400 kilometres east of the Gambier Islands and 1,700 kilometres west of Rapa Nui/Easter Island, this island group is one of the world’s most geographically isolated

USCID fourth international conference

Presented at the Role of irrigation and drainage in a sustainable future: USCID fourth international conference on irrigation and drainage on October 3-6, 2007 in Sacramento, California.Includes bibliographical references.Centre pivot irrigation systems are known for their irrigation distribution performance potential. Unfortunately the performance analysis of centre pivot irrigation systems is often restricted to the uniformity of distribution. Depending on the characteristics of the applied rainfall, a system designed for high uniformity does not guarantee a high application efficiency once the system is in operation. A method is proposed in the present paper to analyse the average rainfall depth of application and kinetic energy delivered to the soil by individual droplets all over the machine. The method requires water distribution profiles, the distribution of droplet size and velocity along the radius of coverage for any nozzle, and pressure and height of the emitter installed on the machine. Considering the number of nozzles and the range of pressure applied, there is the need for a method calculating: the emitter maximum radius of coverage, then the rainfall distribution profile, then the droplet distribution and finally the associated kinetic energy delivery. These parameters are calculated on a new model of classical design sprayers proposed by IWT Company. These results are being integrated on a centre pivot nozzle chart design software presented in the poster session

Sludge drying reed beds for septage treatment: towards design and operation recommendations

International audienceWith decentralized treatment system development, a new concern emerges: the future of the septage. The aim of this paper is to assess the feasibility of septage treatment by SDRB, and to compare its efficiencies to those of activated sludge treatment in same conditions. The study took place on ten 2m² pilot-scales SDRB. Different designs and operation conditions have been tested on sludge treatment efficiency and will be presented as: (i) the top filtration layer (sand or compost), (ii) the load (from 30 to 50 kgSS/m-2/y). After one year and half commissioning period, we focus on the results obtained at nominal loads presenting: sludge characteristic, filtration efficiency, percolate quality and sludge deposit behaviour. Although results show better filtration efficiency for activated sludge (98.4%) than for septage (87.5%), the feasibility of septage treatment with drying reed bed has been demonstrated. Sludge accumulation is about 7.9 cm/y, when fed at 50 kgSS/m-2/y, and dry matter content of the sludge can reach 70% in summer period. The paper will present sludge characteristics, system efficiency, to finish on design and operation condition recommendations for SDRB treating septage

Intake by Lactating Goats Browsing on Mediterranean Shrubland

In Mediterranean regions goat feeding systems are mainly based on shrubland that contain a wide variety of species. There are only a few equations for predicting feed intake of stall-fed goats (Luo et al., 2004). The objective of this study was to develop a model for predicting the intake of lactating goats browsing on Mediterranean shrubland