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Emergence of a toxic organism like pfisteria in tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay has focused public attention on potential hazards in our water. More importantly, it has reminded us of the importance of the entire watershed to the health of any body of water and how political boundaries complicate watershed management. New Strategies for America's Watersheds provides a timely and comprehensive look at the rise of "watershed thinking" among scientists and policymakers and recommends ways to steer the nation toward improved watershed management. The volume defines important terms, identifies fundamental issues, and explores reasons why now is the time to bring watersheds to the forefront of ecosystem management. In a discussion of scale and scope, the committee examines how to expand the watershed from a topographic unit to a framework for integrating natural, social, and economic perspectives as they share the same geographic space. The volume discusses: Regional variations in climate, topography, demographics, institutions, land use, culture, and law. Roles and interaction of federal, state, and local agencies. Availability or lack of pertinent data. Options for financing. The committee identifies critical points in watershed planning to ensure appropriate stakeholder involvement and integration of science, policy, and environmental ethics.
In 1997, New York City adopted a mammoth watershed agreement to protect its drinking water and avoid filtration of its large upstate surface water supply. Shortly thereafter, the NRC began an analysis of the agreement's scientific validity. The resulting book finds New York City's watershed agreement to be a good template for proactive watershed management that, if properly implemented, will maintain high water quality. However, it cautions that the agreement is not a guarantee of permanent filtration avoidance because of changing regulations, uncertainties regarding pollution sources, advances in treatment technologies, and natural variations in watershed conditions. The book recommends that New York City place its highest priority on pathogenic microorganisms in the watershed and direct its resources toward improving methods for detecting pathogens, understanding pathogen transport and fate, and demonstrating that best management practices will remove pathogens. Other recommendations, which are broadly applicable to surface water supplies across the country, target buffer zones, stormwater management, water quality monitoring, and effluent trading.
Watershed management is an integrated approach that evaluates system-wide implications of natural resource problems. It has received considerable attention among communities and resource managers as an appropriate approach to deal with complex problems. Problem-solving is an important aspect of watersheds that involves diagnosis, assessment, solution, and implementation issues that often mean processing an enormous amount of information. A typical problem requires compilation of information from a variety of sources and is time consuming. This book will use a problem-based approach to present information on each problem facing watersheds. The subject area derives from a variety of disciplines and experiences and is presented clear and systematically throughout for easy reading and understanding. The problems covered in the book are major ones facing watersheds through the globe. The first chapter introduces principles of watershed management and is followed by chapters that are problem specific. Each problem is dealt with systematically with introduction, analysis, strategies, and further references. Watershed Management provides a valuable reference to professionals, students, scientists, and common citizens who are interested in learning about the variety of problems and approaches in watershed management.
New York City's municipal water supply system provides about 1 billion gallons of drinking water a day to over 8.5 million people in New York City and about 1 million people living in nearby Westchester, Putnam, Ulster, and Orange counties. The combined water supply system includes 19 reservoirs and three controlled lakes with a total storage capacity of approximately 580 billion gallons. The city's Watershed Protection Program is intended to maintain and enhance the high quality of these surface water sources. Review of the New York City Watershed Protection Program assesses the efficacy and future of New York City's watershed management activities. The report identifies program areas that may require future change or action, including continued efforts to address turbidity and responding to changes in reservoir water quality as a result of climate change.
The Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) enables planners to predict the average rate of soil erosion for each feasible alternative combination of crop system and management practices in association with a specified soil type, rainfall pattern, and topography. When these predicted losses are compared with given soil loss tolerances, they provide specific guidelines for effecting erosion control within specified limits. The equation groups the numerous interrelated physical and management parameters that influence erosion rate under six major factors whose site-specific values can be expressed numerically. A half century of erosion research in many States has supplied information from which at least approximate values of the USLE factors can be obtained for specified farm fields or other small erosion prone areas throughout the United States. Tables and charts presented in this handbook make this information readily available for field use. Significant limitations in the available data are identified.
Research on reservoir sedimentation in recent years has been aimed mainly at water resources projects in developing countries. These countries, especially in Africa, often have to cope with long droughts, flash floods and severe erosion problems. Large reservoir capacities are required to capture water provided by flash floods so as to ensure the supply of water in periods of drought. The problem arising however is that these floods, due to their tremendous stream power, carry enormous volumes of sediment which, due to the size of reservoirs, are virtually deposited in toto in the reservoir basin, leading to fast deterioration of a costly investment. Accurate forecasting of reservoir behaviour is therefore of the utmost importance.This book fills a gap in current literature by providing in one volume comprehensive coverage of techniques required to practically investigate the effects sediment deposition in reservoirs has on the viability of water resources projects. Current techniques for practically estimating sediment yield from catchments, estimating the volume of sediment expected to deposit in reservoirs, predicting sediment distribution and calculating scour downstream of reservoirs are evaluated and presented. The liberal use of diagrams and graphs to explain the various techniques enhances understanding and makes practical application simple. A major feature of the book is the application of stream power theory to explain the process of reservoir sedimentation and to develop four new methods for predicting sediment distribution in reservoirs.The book is primarily directed at practising engineers involved in the planning and design of water resources projects and at post-graduate students interested in this field of study.
Headwaters are fragile environments threatened by anthropogenic actions. The regeneration of headwaters calls for a practical approach through integrated environmental management. This book discusses various issues concerning headwater regions of the world under wide-ranging themes: climate change impacts, vegetal cover, sub-surface hydrology, catchment and streamflow hydrology, pollution, water quality and limnology, remote sensing and GIS, environmental impact assessment and mitigation, socio-economic impacts, public participation, education and management, and integrated watershed management. This book aims to bring about an awareness in sustainable regeneration of headwater regions and particularly highlighting the problems of environmental management in highlands and headwaters. These regions consist of great reserves of natural resources which need to be exploited and managed sustainably.
This study takes stock of the current water resources management in Armenia, including diagnosing the main sub-sectors (agriculture, urban, environment, and energy), reviewing the institutional framework and implementation status of water-sector policies, identifying the main challenges and making recommendations on the next steps.
This proceedings volume contains papers and extended abstracts presented at the International Conference on Sustainable Watershed Management (SuWaMa 2014). The Conference was the second in a series of Sustainable Watershed Management Conferences. The objective of the Conference Series was to present and discuss advanced environmental models and contemporary decision support tools for the sustainable use and development of watersheds. Contributions cover the following topics: sound watershed management practices (case studies and examples from various countries including lessons learned from implementation of both successful and deficient management scenarios), decision support tools (such as monitoring, GIS, ecological economics, cost/benefit analysis and decision making models), integrated environmental model applications for management (including watershed, air-shed, coastal, and living resource models), trans-boundary environmental issues (air pollution, climate change, coastal oceans at regional, continental, and global scales) and global watershed sustainability. This multidisciplinary volume will benefit natural and social scientists, engineers, managers and other professionals as well as stakeholders with an interest in water resources and their management.