This paper examines the changing profile of water traders (both allocation and entitlement traders) in the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District in Australia, and examines the efficiency of the water allocation and entitlement markets from 1998-99 to 2003-06. The results suggest that the profile of traders in the early and mature stages of the water allocation market differ greatly. In addition, the profile of allocation traders is significantly dissimilar from that of water entitlement traders at all stages of water market development.

We review the current status of experimental studies in India to understand the linkages between afforestation and hydrology. This discipline deals with the use and management of water, social awareness of environmental problems, and ecosystem limitations on provision of watershed services by river basins in the mountain regions of India.

Quantifying recharge from agricultural areas is important to sustain long-term groundwater use, make intelligent groundwater allocation decisions, and develop on-farm water management strategies. The scarcity of data in many arid regions, especially in the Middle East, has necessitated the use of combined mathematical models and field observations to estimate groundwater recharge. This study was designed to assess the recharge contribution to groundwater from rainfall and irrigation return flow in the Mosian plain, west of Iran.

In the conditions of the Republic of Belarus there was analyzed a problem of economic basing of optimal functioning of melioration system taking into account planning of agricultural production and reproduction of water-and-land resources during the given period. There were presented methods of basing of initial information for the suggested economic-mathematical model.

This paper presents a spatial framework which can be used to perform multi-criteria assessments for different purposes. We tested the framework on a case study of evaluating potential expansion for irrigated pasture in the Limestone Coast of South Australia. The core of the framework is the fuzzy linguistic ordered weighted averaging (FLOWA) model which integrates and implements fuzzy quantifiers, Ordered Weighted Averaging (OWA) and Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) in the ArcGIS environment.

This paper is a critical synthesis of the causes, effects and challenges of the Sahelian droughts. The results show that the four main causes of the Sahelian droughts are as follows: sea surface temperature changes, vegetation and land degradation, dust feedbacks and human-induced climate change. However, human-induced climate change is seen as the major drought-determining factor because it controls sea surface temperatures, dust feedbacks and vegetation degradation.

This paper presents an institutional analysis of hydropower development in Chile, focusing on the main legal institutions involved and relevant jurisprudence. Hydropower expansion took place within a neoliberal institutional framework imposed by the military government (1973–1990) that included reforms in both the water and electricity sectors. One of the stated purposes of these reforms was to remove ideology from both water management and electricity generation and ensure the neutrality of the state.

It is widely recognised that the current abstraction licensing system in England needs to be reformed to meet the challenges of future environmental flow requirements, likely increases in water demands and climate change. The UK Government has committed to the reform of the abstraction regime in England and work is underway, including the Welsh Government, to assess the impacts of different reform options, working closely with stakeholders.

Accurate and timely information about the geographic distribution of irrigated cropland is important for a range of applications including crop assessments, water resources management, drought monitoring, and environmental modeling.

Information on the spatial distribution of soil salinity can be used as guidance in avoiding the continued degradation of land and water resources by better informing policy makers. However, most regional soil-salinity maps are produced through a conventional direct-linking method derived from historic observations. Such maps lack spatial details and are limited in describing the evolution of soil salinization in particular instances.

Indonesia has available over 20 million ha of tidal lowlands. In their natural state these are generally waterlogged areas that may be regularly inundated for prolonged periods. Almost 4 million ha of these tidal lowlands have been reclaimed, partly by spontaneous settlers and partly by the government.