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.

Necessity of the increment of the milk and meat production along with other agricultural products has caused the need to engage in an intensive agricultural use of new land, including flood areas that have been drained through the construction of polder systems. A total number of protective systems, fencing drained land from the influx of surface water compose over 3,900 miles of dikes. Nowadays reclaimed lands compose more than 220 hectares, equipped with polder system with mechanical water lift.

Waterlogging and secondary salinisation have become serious problems in canal irrigated areas of arid and semi‐arid regions. This study examined hydrology and estimated the seasonal net groundwater recharge of an irrigated semi‐arid region located in the Haryana State of India where about 500 000 ha area are waterlogged and unproductive, and the size of the waterlogged area is increasing, causing a threat to agricultural sustainability.

Human activities have created high nutrient surpluses in agricultural lands due to the increasing rate of chemical fertilizer application and the increase in livestock production. To analyse the nutrient characteristics and estimate the nutrient load in streams, we conducted extensive field survey and water quality experiments from 2007 to 2008 in Koise River, a major river of the Lake Kasumigaura watershed, Japan. Water quality indicators of total nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and total organic carbon (TOC) were investigated.

The Water Framework Directive (WFD) of the European Union provides a common framework for water policy that focuses on holistic and integrated water management in river basins. In many member states, implementation of the WFD has shifted the main responsibility for local water issues from the municipal level to the regional or supra-regional levels. In this study, we investigated how the implementation of the WFD has influenced local-level water management including the interpretation of the new environmental quality standards.

Daily tropical rainfall measuring mission (TRMM)-based rainfall and Landsat-derived land-cover maps were used to retrospectively simulate runoff for the Black Volta Basin. This was to ascertain the usefulness of the increasingly available satellite observation data to augment ground-measured hydrometeorological data for unguaged basins or basins with inadequate data. Both visual and statistical comparison of TRMM-based rainfall with the gauged rainfall indicates that the monthly rainfall data are statistically comparable.

Pathogen contamination of waterbodies, which is often identified by the presence of pathogen indicators such as Escherichia coli, is a major water quality concern in the United States. Reducing in-stream pathogen contamination requires an understanding of the combined impacts of land cover, climatic conditions, and anthropogenic activities at the watershed scale. In this study these factors are considered by assessing linear relationships between in-stream E. coli water quality data, watershed indexes, and rainfall for the Squaw Creek Watershed, IA, USA.

The existing legal framework for water resources management in Guatemala is obsolete, inconsistent and not enforced. To bridge the gap, many indigenous and non-indigenous communities throughout the country successfully regulate water use through oral or written bylaws. This paper classifies the rules and practices adopted by local communities in order to define their scope and anticipate options to recognize customary water rights in future statutory legislation, as well as under the current legal regime, consistently with the public interest.

Increased development around Minnesota's lakes and their respective watersheds has degraded lake health in counties surrounding the St. Paul and Minneapolis metro areas. Confronted with the implications of degraded lakes, such as loss of property values and declining recreational experiences, lakefront landowners, and those using the lake for recreation, are increasingly looking for meaningful ways to engage in activities to improve lake water quality.