Targeting Environmental Water from Irrigators in the Murray Darling Basin

The extended dry conditions in the Murray Darling Basin have resulted in unprecedented levels of reduced water availability for both irrigators and the environment. Concerns over environmental degradation and the health of the river Murray have prompted the Federal and State Governments to cooperate in a range of environmental water restoration programs, including environmental water purchases. These programs have been subjected to varying levels of criticism as to the environmental effectiveness and the economic merit in addressing the central problem of over allocation of a spatially distributed multiple use resource. This paper investigates the economic-environmental tradeoffs under the assumption of unrestricted trade in the Basin. Using a bio-economic model of the Murray Darling Basin we will investigate the opportunity costs of not allowing unrestricted trade, and then consider alternative Environmental Water Allocations (EWAs) to environmental Icon Sites. The model suggests that if unrestricted trade was implemented across the Basin, there would be potential for massive water savings compared to the current long term average cap, and benefits to trade in the order of $96 million. The model also suggests that, under unrestricted trade, the provision of large EWA’s will lead to large reductions in water use (40 percent), however the relative reduction in agricultural value will be much less (12 percent). This brings to question the current objective of the government buybacks as a transition to the Water Act 2009 Sustainable Diversions while allowing State enforced barriers to trade.Murray Darling Basin, water, environmental flows

Table builder problem - confidentiality for linked tables

The aim of this project is to investigate solutions to the problem of improving access to detailed survey data, while ensuring no person or organisation is likely to be identified, or otherwise put at risk of having their data disclosed, and to link general findings back to the ABS Table Builder problem. We focussed on making contributions in two main areas, namely: 1. Identification of sensitive cells in a table, 2. Maximizing data utility and minimising information loss - ensuring the table provides useful information

The Legalization of the Family: Towards a Policy of Supportive Neutrality

In recent years government has withdrawn control from some family matters, while initiating intervention into others. Paradoxically, the intention behind such new regulation has often been to increase individual liberty Nevertheless, increased government involvement created- the sense that law had seeped into every crevice of American life and that sensible people ought to be asking whether we have gone too far, that underlies this conference. Support for Ronald Reagan\u27s presidential candidacy represents a different kind of response to this feeling, as does such Republican legislation as the proposed Family Protection Act of 1981. Intended to \u27reemphasize the values that made this a great nation ,\u27 this bill would bar the use of federal funds for educational materials undermining separate roles for men and women and would bar attorneys of any Legal Services Corporation program from helping poor people obtain divorces

Signaling in development

A report on the 'Integration of Signaling Pathways in Development' Keystone Symposium, Keystone, Colorado, USA, 27 January to 1 February 2001

Climate change, mitigation and adaptation: the case of the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia

Climate change is likely to have substantial effects on irrigated agriculture. It is anticipated that many areas that are already dry will become drier, while areas that already receive high rainfall may experience further increases. Extreme climate events such as droughts are likely to become more common. These patterns are evident in projections of climate change for the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia. To understand the effects of climate change, as modified by mitigation and adaptation, active management responses designed to improve returns in particular states of nature, such as in the case of drought must be considered. A change in the frequency of drought will induce a change in the allocation of land and water between productive activities. Even with action to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at or near current levels, climate change will continue for some decades and adaptation will therefore be necessary. Conversely, most adaptation strategies are feasible only if the rate and extent of climate change is limited by mitigation. In this paper, a simulation model of state-contingent production is used to analyze these issues.Irrigation, Uncertainty, Climate Change

Climate change, uncertainty and adaptation: the case of irrigated agriculture in the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia

Climate change is likely to have substantial effects on irrigated agriculture. Extreme climate events such as droughts are likely to become more common. These patterns are evident in median projections of climate change for the Murray–Darling Basin in Australia. Understanding climate change effects on returns from irrigation involves explicit representation of spatial changes in natural stocks (i.e. water supply) and their temporal variability (i.e. frequency of drought states of nature) and the active management responses to capital stocks represented by mitigation and alternative adaptation strategies by state of nature . A change in the frequency of drought will induce a change in the allocation of land and water between productive activities. In this paper, a simulation model of state-contingent production is used to analyze the effects of climate change adaptation and mitigation. In the absence of mitigation, climate change will have severe adverse effects on irrigated agriculture in the Basin. However, a combination of climate mitigation and adaptation through changes in land and water use will allow the maintenance of agricultural water use and environmental flows.Irrigation, Uncertainty, Climate Change

Monitoring Networked Applications With Incremental Quantile Estimation

Networked applications have software components that reside on different computers. Email, for example, has database, processing, and user interface components that can be distributed across a network and shared by users in different locations or work groups. End-to-end performance and reliability metrics describe the software quality experienced by these groups of users, taking into account all the software components in the pipeline. Each user produces only some of the data needed to understand the quality of the application for the group, so group performance metrics are obtained by combining summary statistics that each end computer periodically (and automatically) sends to a central server. The group quality metrics usually focus on medians and tail quantiles rather than on averages. Distributed quantile estimation is challenging, though, especially when passing large amounts of data around the network solely to compute quality metrics is undesirable. This paper describes an Incremental Quantile (IQ) estimation method that is designed for performance monitoring at arbitrary levels of network aggregation and time resolution when only a limited amount of data can be transferred. Applications to both real and simulated data are provided.Comment: This paper commented in: [arXiv:0708.0317], [arXiv:0708.0336], [arXiv:0708.0338]. Rejoinder in [arXiv:0708.0339]. Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000583 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Accommodation and Satisfaction: Women and Men Lawyers and the Balance of Work and Family

This study of graduates of the University of Michigan Law School from the late 1970s reports on the differing ways that women and men have responded to the conflicting claims of work and family. It finds that women with children who have entered the profession have indeed continued to bear the principalr esponsibilitiesf or the care of children, but it alsof inds that these women, with all their burdens, are more satisfied with their careers and with the balance of their family and professional lives than other women and than men

SALT Survey: Minority Group Persons in Law School Teaching

In the summer and fall of 1981 we sent questionnaires to faculty members1 at all 172 law schools accredited by the AALS, asking questions about current numbers of minority group members and women on their faculties and about numbers of offers made and offers accepted, tenure decisions and denials, and resignations. Our principal goal was to measure the progress that has been achieved in adding minorities and women to law faculties. In this issue, we report on our findings about minority groups