Giving color to Oregon's gray water market : an analysis of price determinants for water right

Many parts of the West are experiencing substantial growth pressures that have increased the demand for water. These new demands come at a time when most of the water in the West has been fully appropriated by traditional uses such as agriculture, mining, and industry. Some attempts are being made to accommodate this new demand by reallocating water rights through market forces. Most western water markets are in their infancy at present, and have had limited trading activity; this has resulted in large variations in prices. Oregon's water market is no exception to this situation; little market information is available. The market is most appropriately characterized as a gray market. This thesis gives color to Oregon's gray water market. The first step was to assess current market activity. A review of the Oregon Water Resources Department water right transfer records identified 140 potential water right sales during the five year period from 1989 to 1994. A mail survey was used to collect market information on these potential sales. Reported sale prices exhibited a large degree of variation, ranging from $5 per acre-foot to as much as$1388 per acre-foot. The data suggests that there are two types of markets for water rights in Oregon. The first is a commercial market that includes participants such as commercial farmers, industries, and municipalities. The second is an amenity market whose participants have primary occupations unrelated to the use of the water right and who generally use water for smallscale, low-valued agricultural production. The second step in giving color to Oregon's gray water market was to identify potential price determinants for water rights. An econometric model based on hedonic price theory was constructed to analyze the relationship between potential price determinants and market prices. Results indicated that the duty of the water right, its relative seniority, the parcel size of the sale, and the geographic location of the sale are determinants of water right prices

Water Markets: Australia's Murray-Darling Basin and the US Southwest

Fresh water supplies increasingly are under stress in many parts of the world due to rising populations, higher per capita incomes and corresponding consumption, greater environmental concerns, and the effects of climate change. Water rights and markets are part of the institutional menus for responding to these problems. We examine water markets in both Australia’s MDB and the western US and their prospects for addressing water scarcity. The two regions share a number of important similarities including: climate variability that requires investment in reservoirs to make water available in low-rainfall periods; the need for internal and cross-border (state) water management; an historical major allocation of water to irrigators; increasing competition among different uses (agricultural, environmental and recreational in situ uses, urban demand); and the potential for water trading to more smoothly and quickly allocate water across these competing uses. A comparison of the two regions provides important insights about how economic factors can encourage more efficient water allocation, market structure and government regulation. We show that rights are more clearly defined and trading more common in Australia than appears to be the case in the western U.S. Longer periods of scarcity and hence, higher water values may explain this difference.

Comparative Assessment of Water markets: Insights from the Murray-Darling Basin of Australia and the Western USA

Water markets in Australia\u27s Murray–Darling Basin (MDB) and the western USA are compared in terms of their ability to allocate scarce water resources. The study finds that the gains from trade in the MDB are worth hundreds of millions of dollars per year (note that all monetary units of dollars in this article are treated as US$because Australian$ are converted at par). Total market turnover in water rights exceeds US$2 billion per year while the volume of trade exceeds over 20$4.3 billion (2008 US$; monetary units in dollars are expressed in their value in US$ in 2008) spent or committed by urban buyers between 1987 and 2008. The two-market comparison suggests that policy attention should be directed towards ways of promoting water trade while simultaneously mitigating the legitimate third party concerns about how and where water is used, especially in conflicts between consumptive and in situ uses of water. The study finds that institutional innovation is feasible in both countries and that further understanding about the size, duration an

Rope trauma, sedation, disentanglement, and monitoring-tag associated lesions in a terminally entangled North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis)

Author Posting. © Society for Marine Mammalogy, 2012. Re-use of this article is permitted in accordance with the Terms and Conditions set out at http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/onlineopen#OnlineOpen_Terms. The definitive version was published in Marine Mammal Science 29 (2013): E98–E113, doi:10.1111/j.1748-7692.2012.00591.x.A chronically entangled North Atlantic right whale, with consequent emaciation was sedated, disentangled to the extent possible, administered antibiotics, and satellite tag tracked for six subsequent days. It was found dead 11 d after the tag ceased transmission. Chronic constrictive deep rope lacerations and emaciation were found to be the proximate cause of death, which may have ultimately involved shark predation. A broadhead cutter and a spring-loaded knife used for disentanglement were found to induce moderate wounds to the skin and blubber. The telemetry tag, with two barbed shafts partially penetrating the blubber was shed, leaving barbs embedded with localized histological reaction. One of four darts administered shed the barrel, but the needle was found postmortem in the whale with an 80º bend at the blubber-muscle interface. This bend occurred due to epaxial muscle movement relative to the overlying blubber, with resultant necrosis and cavitation of underlying muscle. This suggests that rigid, implanted devices that span the cetacean blubber muscle interface, where the muscle moves relative to the blubber, could have secondary health impacts. Thus we encourage efforts to develop new tag telemetry systems that do not penetrate the subdermal sheath, but still remain attached for many months.Funding from NOAA Cooperative Agreement NA09OAR4320129, PO EA133F09SE4792, M. S. Worthington Foundation, North Pond Foundation, Sloan and Hardwick Simmons, and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Marine Mammal Center

Multi-messenger observations of a binary neutron star merger

On 2017 August 17 a binary neutron star coalescence candidate (later designated GW170817) with merger time 12:41:04 UTC was observed through gravitational waves by the Advanced LIGO and Advanced Virgo detectors. The Fermi Gamma-ray Burst Monitor independently detected a gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) with a time delay of ~1.7 s with respect to the merger time. From the gravitational-wave signal, the source was initially localized to a sky region of 31 deg2 at a luminosity distance of 40+8-8 Mpc and with component masses consistent with neutron stars. The component masses were later measured to be in the range 0.86 to 2.26 Mo. An extensive observing campaign was launched across the electromagnetic spectrum leading to the discovery of a bright optical transient (SSS17a, now with the IAU identification of AT 2017gfo) in NGC 4993 (at ~40 Mpc) less than 11 hours after the merger by the One- Meter, Two Hemisphere (1M2H) team using the 1 m Swope Telescope. The optical transient was independently detected by multiple teams within an hour. Subsequent observations targeted the object and its environment. Early ultraviolet observations revealed a blue transient that faded within 48 hours. Optical and infrared observations showed a redward evolution over ~10 days. Following early non-detections, X-ray and radio emission were discovered at the transient’s position ~9 and ~16 days, respectively, after the merger. Both the X-ray and radio emission likely arise from a physical process that is distinct from the one that generates the UV/optical/near-infrared emission. No ultra-high-energy gamma-rays and no neutrino candidates consistent with the source were found in follow-up searches. These observations support the hypothesis that GW170817 was produced by the merger of two neutron stars in NGC4993 followed by a short gamma-ray burst (GRB 170817A) and a kilonova/macronova powered by the radioactive decay of r-process nuclei synthesized in the ejecta