Socio-hydrologic drivers of the pendulum swing between agricultural development and environmental health: A case study from Murrumbidgee River basin, Australia

This paper presents a case study centred on the Murrumbidgee River basin in eastern Australia. It illustrates the dynamics of the balance between water extraction and use for food production, and efforts to mitigate and reverse consequent degradation of the riparian environment. In particular, the paper traces the history of a pendulum swing between an exclusive focus on agricultural development and food production in the initial stages and its attendant socio-economic benefits, followed by the gradual realization of the adverse environmental impacts, subsequent efforts to mitigate these with the use of remedial measures, and ultimately concerted efforts and externally imposed solutions to restore environmental health and ecosystem services. The 100-year history of development within the Murrumbidgee is divided into four eras, each underpinned by the dominance of different values and norms and turning points characterized by their changes. The various stages of development can be characterized by the dominance, in turn, of infrastructure systems, policy frameworks, economic instruments, and technological solutions. The paper argues that, to avoid these costly pendulum swings, management needs to be underpinned by long-term coupled socio-hydrologic system models that explicitly include the two-way coupling between human and hydrological systems, including the slow evolution of human values and norms relating to water and the environment. Such coupled human-water system models can provide insights into dominant controls of the trajectory of their co-evolution in a given system, and can also be used to interpret patterns of co-evolution of such coupled systems in different places across gradients of climatic, socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions, and in this way to help develop generalizable understanding. © 2014 Author(s)

Developing predictive insight into changing water systems: use-inspired hydrologic science for the Anthropocene

Globally, many different kinds of water resources management issues call for policy- and infrastructure-based responses. Yet responsible decision-making about water resources management raises a fundamental challenge for hydrologists: making predictions about water resources on decadal - to century-long timescales. Obtaining insight into hydrologic futures over 100 yr timescales forces researchers to address internal and exogenous changes in the properties of hydrologic systems. To do this, new hydrologic research must identify, describe and model feedbacks between water and other changing, coupled environmental subsystems. These models must be constrained to yield useful insights, despite the many likely sources of uncertainty in their predictions. Chief among these uncertainties are the impacts of the increasing role of human intervention in the global water cycle – a defining challenge for hydrology in the Anthropocene. Here we present a research agenda that proposes a suite of strategies to address these challenges from the perspectives of hydrologic science research. The research agenda focuses on the development of co-evolutionary hydrologic modeling to explore coupling across systems, and to address the implications of this coupling on the long-time behavior of the coupled systems. Three research directions supportthe development of these models: hydrologic reconstruction, comparative hydrology and model-data learning. These strategies focus on understanding hydrologic processes and feedbacks over long timescales, across many locations, and through strategic coupling of observational and model data in specific systems. We highlight the value of use-inspired and team-based science that is motivated by real-world hydrologic problems but targets improvements in fundamental understanding to support decision-making and management. Fully realizing the potential of this approach will ultimately require detailed integration of social science and physical science understanding of water systems, and is a priority for the developing field of sociohydrology

First report on \u3cem\u3eHottentotta tamulus\u3c/em\u3e (Scorpiones: Buthidae) from Sri Lanka, and its medical importance

A scorpion species proved to be lethal to humans was recently recorded from Jaffna Peninsula (9°40\u270\u27\u27N 80°0\u270\u27\u27E, mean annual temperature 26.2°C), in the northern dry zone of Sri Lanka. This species is morphologically different from all other known scorpions in Sri Lanka. The species was identified as Hottentotta tamulus (Scorpiones: Buthidae), which is commonly found in Maharashtra, India, the closest mainland to Sri Lanka. Small children and housewives were most of the victims. Soon after sting, the patient develops intense pain at the site of sting followed by numbed sensation. Dominant clinical effects include excessive sweating, agitation and palpitation. Blood pressure of the victim goes up, and if not promptly treated leads to acute heart failure. There is a high risk of spreading of this species to the rest of the country due to transport of goods and sand from the area

Soil moisture controls on patterns of grass green-up in Inner Mongolia: an index based approach

Water availability is one of the most important environmental controls on vegetation phenology, especially in semi-arid regions. It is often represented in terms of soil moisture in small-scale studies, whereas it tends to be represented by precipitation in large-scale (e.g., regional) studies. Clearly, soil moisture is the more appropriate indicator for root water uptake and vegetation growth/phenology. Its potential advantage and applicability needs to be demonstrated at regional scales. The paper presents a data-based regional study of the effectiveness of novel water and temperature-based indices to predict spring vegetation green-up dates based on the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) observations in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia, China. The macro-scale hydrological model, VIC (Variable Infiltration Capacity), is employed to generate a soil moisture database across the region. In addition to a standard index based on temperature, two potential hydrology-based indices for prediction of spring onset dates are defined, based on the simulated soil moisture data as well as on observed precipitation data. Results indicate that the correspondence between the NDVI-derived green-up onset date and the soil-moisture-derived potential onset date exhibits a significantly better correlation as a function of increasing aridity compared to that based on precipitation. In this way the soil-moisture-based index is demonstrated to be superior to the precipitation-based index in terms of capturing grassland spring phenology. The results also showed that both of the hydrological (water-based) indices were superior to the thermal (temperature-based) index in determining the patterns of grass green-up in the Inner Mongolia region, indicating water availability to be the dominant control on average. The understanding about the relative controls on grassland phenology and the effectiveness of alternative indices to capture these controls are important for future studies of vegetation phenology change under climate change

Catchment classification:hydrological analysis of catchment behavior through process-based modeling along a climate gradient

Catchment classification is an efficient method to synthesize our understanding of how climate variability and catchment characteristics interact to define hydrological response. One way to accomplish catchment classification is to empirically relate climate and catchment characteristics to hydrologic behavior and to quantify the skill of predicting hydrologic response based on the combination of climate and catchment characteristics. Here we present results using an alternative approach that uses our current level of hydrological understanding, expressed in the form of a process-based model, to interrogate how climate and catchment characteristics interact to produce observed hydrologic response. The model uses topographic, geomorphologic, soil and vegetation information at the catchment scale and conditions parameter values using readily available data on precipitation, temperature and streamflow. It is applicable to a wide range of catchments in different climate settings. We have developed a step-by-step procedure to analyze the observed hydrologic response and to assign parameter values related to specific components of the model. We applied this procedure to 12 catchments across a climate gradient east of the Rocky Mountains, USA. We show that the model is capable of reproducing the observed hydrologic behavior measured through hydrologic signatures chosen at different temporal scales. Next, we analyze the dominant time scales of catchment response and their dimensionless ratios with respect to climate and observable landscape features in an attempt to explain hydrologic partitioning. We find that only a limited number of model parameters can be related to observable landscape features. However, several climate-model time scales, and the associated dimensionless numbers, show scaling relationships with respect to the investigated hydrological signatures (runoff coefficient, baseflow index, and slope of the flow duration curve). Moreover, some dimensionless numbers vary systematically across the climate gradient, possibly as a result of systematic co-variation of climate, vegetation and soil related time scales. If such co-variation can be shown to be robust across many catchments along different climate gradients, it opens perspective for model parameterization in ungauged catchments as well as prediction of hydrologic response in a rapidly changing environment

Specific Roles of XRCC4 Paralogs PAXX and XLF during V(D)J Recombination.

Paralog of XRCC4 and XLF (PAXX) is a member of the XRCC4 superfamily and plays a role in nonhomologous end-joining (NHEJ), a DNA repair pathway critical for lymphocyte antigen receptor gene assembly. Here, we find that the functions of PAXX and XLF in V(D)J recombination are masked by redundant joining activities. Thus, combined PAXX and XLF deficiency leads to an inability to join RAG-cleaved DNA ends. Additionally, we demonstrate that PAXX function in V(D)J recombination depends on its interaction with Ku. Importantly, we show that, unlike XLF, the role of PAXX during the repair of DNA breaks does not overlap with ATM and the RAG complex. Our findings illuminate the role of PAXX in V(D)J recombination and support a model in which PAXX and XLF function during NHEJ repair of DNA breaks, whereas XLF, the RAG complex, and the ATM-dependent DNA damage response promote end joining by stabilizing DNA ends.Cancer Research UK (Grant IDs: C6/A18796, C6946/A14492, C6/A18796), European Research Council (Grant ID: 310917), Wellcome Trust (Grant ID: WT092096), University of Cambridge, Institut PasteurThis is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier (Cell Press) via http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.celrep.2016.08.06

Impacts of climate change on agricultural production in arid areas (ICCAP) -The possible effect of climatic changes on the irrigated agriculture of Seyhan Basin-

We present a new framework for modelling the complexities of food and water security under globalisation. The framework sets out a method to capture regional and sectoral interdependencies and cross-scale feedbacks within the global food system that contribute to emergent water use patterns. The framework integrates aspects of existing models and approaches in the fields of hydrology and integrated assessment modelling. The core of the framework is a multi-agent network of city agents connected by infrastructural trade networks. Agents receive socio-economic and environmental constraint information from integrated assessment models and hydrological models respectively and simulate complex, socio-environmental dynamics that operate within those constraints. The emergent changes in food and water resources are aggregated and fed back to the original models with minimal modification of the structure of those models. It is our conviction that the framework presented can form the basis for a new wave of decision tools that capture complex socio-environmental change within our globalised world. In doing so they will contribute to illuminating pathways towards a sustainable future for humans, ecosystems and the water they share