progressX

_NEW: follow the development of the new web-presence wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com print download: http://bit.ly/185cRt9 Sustainable urban water supply represents a key issue today as well as in the near future. Often networks are out of date, leakage or plugging is a common issue and investments need to be considered very careful. In addition, the behaviour, i.e. the demand of the consumers varies strongly. The present issue of the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management (Q04/2014) – Managing the Urban Water Supply - tries to provide an overview of innovative articles addressing the above issues in-depth. As always, a summary of news about the development of the web-portal is given. In the fifth year of its operation the platform is subject to a thorough re-design. This implies that the former _kt75 | mirror ( http://kt75-mirror.blogspot.com/ ) is now integrated into the large information portal http://wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com . Via this portal a number of other s...

-- a _kt75 | note _NEW: follow the development of wolframscharnhorst.blogspot.com and explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Have you also been informed that your LinkedIN account has been inactivated, at least temporarily? Did you also receive an e-mail that told you that "some members accused you to either spam, perform phishing or connecting with people you don't know"? Did the same e-mail ask you to confirm in written that you will adhere to the rules of LinkedIN? If so, you are in good company with many other concerned people. The common procedure is as follows: the account is inactivated without any prior warning the only contact path is directly via some sort of help center of LinkedIN if happened for the second time or more, the individual request for re-activation of the account is processed rather slowly the accusations are as always: spam, phishing or connecting with to many people and the accusations are not docume...

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Approximately 40 to 60 percent of the region’s waste water is discharged into the sea when it could be stored and reused for other purposes, according to ARCADIS’ 2014 Middle East Aquifer Recharge report.“The region should use treated sewage effluent (TSE) as the precious resource it is and stop thinking of it as waste or a useless by-product,” said Titia De Mes, Water for Industry Leader, Middle East at ARCADIS. “TSE can and should be recycled, but this requires a change in thinking from being a choice and a cost to a necessity and investment – the optimal choice for the Middle East is aquifer recharge and recovery.” The report reveals that merely 60 percent of TSE could be stored in the aquifer and used at a later time through various approaches, highlighting three different methods to aquifer recharge – aquifer storage and recovery; aquifer storage transfer and recovery an...

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Of all the clean water that our cities consume, roughly half of it flows down our sewers to sewage treatment plants where it is treated and released back to the environment. Conventional sewage treatment plants are designed to clean this water to a degree that can be discharged to rivers or the ocean without major environmental or public health impacts. In many parts of the world, sufficient fresh water supplies are increasingly difficult to source. Water stressed cities now import water, pumped over large distances at a considerable energy cost. Los Angeles, for example, imports 8.9bn litres of water a day to meet the city’s needs. Other cities, such as Ashkelon in Israel, are investing in seawater desalination to produce drinkable water. But this process is also highly energy intensive and its application limited to coastal locations. An alternative opportunity is...

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here A crisis is developing beneath China’s thirsty farms and cities, but  no one knows its full extent. With about 20% of the world’s population but only about 5–7% of global freshwater resources, China draws heavily on groundwater. Those reserves are being depleted at an alarming rate in some regions and are badly polluted in many others,  warned experts last week at the International Groundwater Forum 2010 conference in Beijing. The scientists also warned that confronting the crisis will require dealing with other short - ages: of knowledge and regulation. They say that a nationwide network to monitor ground - water levels is urgently needed, and that the government should  improve data sharing, cut water waste and help farming become more efficient. “The water crisis is not unique to China,” says Frank  Schwartz, a hydrologist at Ohio State University in C...

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here The American West has a long tradition of conflict over water . But after fifteen years of drought across the region, it is no longer simply conflict: it is crisis. In the face of unprecedented declines in reservoir storage and groundwater reserves throughout the West, we focus in this discussion paper on a set of policies that could contribute to a lasting solution: using market forces to facilitate the movement of water resources and to mitigate the risk of water shortages.  We begin by reviewing key dimensions of this problem: the challenges of population and economic growth, the environmental stresses from overuse of common water resources, the risk of increasing water-supply volatility, and the historical disjunction that has developed between and among rural and urban water users regarding the amount we cons...

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here Allowing polluters to buy, sell or trade water-quality credits could significantly reduce pollution in river basins and estuaries faster and at lower cost than requiring the facilities to meet compliance costs on their own, a new Duke University-led study finds. The scale and type of the trading programs, though critical, may matter less than just getting them started. "Our analysis shows that water-quality trading of any kind can significantly lower the costs of achieving Clean Water Act goals," said Martin W. Doyle, professor of river science and policy at Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. "All other things being equal, regulators should allow trading to occur at the river basin scale as an appropriate first step. Larger spatial scales may be needed later if abatement costs increase," said Doyle, who also serves as director of the water pol...

-- a _kt75 | reprint _NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here _Experts expect global warming to have a negative impact on crop yields, but shortages of water for irrigation could make for double the trouble, according to a study published yesterday. As described in ScienceDaily, “given the present trajectory of greenhouse gas emissions, agricultural models estimate that climate change will directly reduce food production from maize, soybeans, wheat and rice by as much as 43 percent by the end of the 21st century. But hydrological models looking at the effect of warming climate on freshwater supplies project further agricultural losses, due to the reversion of 20 to 60 million hectares of currently irrigated fields back to rain-fed crops.” The study’s lead author, Joshua Elliot, said the analysis is the first of its kind to feature an in-depth comparison of agricultural and hydrological models, which resulted in dramatically d...

-- a _kt75 | reprint NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... and leave your comments here The sharing of water resources has been an influential feature affecting life, society and development in the Arabian Peninsula , the Mashrek and Mesopotamia for millennia. Historically, communities living in these arid and semi-arid regions always shared the water of rivers, springs and wadis, although this was more out of necessity than idealism. Water resources were traditionally managed at the local level, with tensions emerging between Bedouins, shepherds, pastoralists and growing urban centres. Water management and irrigation schemes – such as the underground aqueducts or falaj networks found in Bahrain, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Yemen – sustained different communal needs for dozens of centuries, while the marshes of Mesopotamia, the Tigris floodplain and the Jordan River Valley were cultivated and sustained successive civilizations since earliest of times. Hillside terra...

-- a _kt75 | note NEW: explore all _kt75 | publications via the news db... This is the two hundredth _kt75 | post since February 2010 and with a daily hit rate between 100 and 200 unique visitors the _kt75 | mirror appears to be a well-accepted source of information in a rather narrow niche: sustainable development with a focus on water management . However, even reliable entities like the _kt75 | mirror seem to be subject to some kind of censor-ship. Just recently the LinkedIN channel of the _kt75 | mirror was temporarily shut-down because of the following baseless accusations: phishing multiple contacting spamming Phishing was never done via _kt75 | mirror, neither multiple contacting. Remains 'spamming'. Now, it might be worth to clarify that the _kt75 | mirror is operated without any kind of (3rd party) advertisement. The only service _kt75 | mirror offers (free of charge) is information supply. This effort is performed with highest dedication and accuracy. The intentio...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . IRAQ depends on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers for drinking water, supplying industry and irrigating massive swathes of farmland. The two rivers account for 98% of the country’s surface water. Until recently the government’s greatest concern has been the fact that the source of neither river is in the country. In the past few decades dams and diversions across Turkey and Syria have steadily reduced the quantity of water reaching Iraq. Now Iraq has a greater concern. Both waterways flow through areas of northern Iraq controlled by the Islamic State (IS), an extremist group that grew out of al-Qaeda in Iraq and today claims an area the size of Jordan straddling Syria and Iraq. On August 8th America began air strikes against the group, after IS carried out a series of attacks that targeted minorities including Christians and Yazidis and threatened the semi-autonomous northern area...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . Abstract In 2013 faced with a critical shortage of water, the Iranian government called for water conservation and greater water use efficiency nation-wide. Despite imminent shortages , water use in Iran remains inefficient, with domestic use 70 per cent higher than the global average. Iran has a national population of 75 million people, 12 million of whom reside in the capital; demand for water is rapidly increasing, even as major lakes and groundwater resources begin to shrink. Population growth, more frequent droughts and the effects of climate change are creating the ‘perfect storm’ for future water insecurity. We are left with the question, are the proposed changes too little, too late? Paper (abbrev.) Security in the Middle East continues to focus on the political and geostrategic priorities of regional states, but a greater challenge has now presented itself, in the form of natural...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . Abstract In 2013 faced with a critical shortage of water, the Iranian government called for water conservation and greater water use efficiency nation-wide. Despite imminent shortages , water use in Iran remains inefficient, with domestic use 70 per cent higher than the global average. Iran has a national population of 75 million people, 12 million of whom reside in the capital; demand for water is rapidly increasing, even as major lakes and groundwater resources begin to shrink. Population growth, more frequent droughts and the effects of climate change are creating the ‘perfect storm’ for future water insecurity. We are left with the question, are the proposed changes too little, too late? Paper (abbrev.) Security in the Middle East continues to focus on the political and geostrategic priorities of regional states, but a greater challenge has now presented itself, in the form of natural...

-- a _kt75 | reprint Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . The German government has committed the country to an 'Energiewende', in which at least 80% of electricity production and 60% of primary energy needs are to be supplied by solar , wind , and other renewable energy sources by 2050. A big open question is how the intermittency of renewable energy sources like wind and sunshine can be reconciled with the need to reliably supply energy whenever and wherever it's needed, whether to heat homes, fuel trucks and trains, or power electrical equipment. 'Power-to- gas ' and 'power-to-liquids' could be the answer, according to engineers and researchers who spoke to a packed hall at the third annual conference of the Power to Gas Association in Berlin on Wednesday (2.7.2014), hosted by the German Energy Agency (DENA) . Michael Sterner, a professor at East Bavarian Technical University in Regensburg, says the technol...

-- a _kt75 | note Download: Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management - Q02/2014 . The most recent issue of the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management (Q02/2014) is freely available. In continuation of the successful publication of the Quarterly Notes on Sustainable Water Management the current issue concentrates on a broad range of topics including land subsidence, implications of climate change on ground water regimes, technical developments in the small hydro power sector, etc. Geographically, the Notes once more focus on regions exposed to complicated water supply conditions: Middle-East and Asia. A number of publications tackle the named issues in detail and provide cutting-edge insights on present developments. An important, because seldom considered, region represents the Horn of Africa and the water supply issues encountered there. A comprehensive overview is provided by a dedicated report. As always all reprints are completely referenced and can be accesse...