Contamination of ground water is a major concern for citizens as well as local, state, and federal agencies that are involved with the management, quality and quantity of water and human health. However, the generation of vulnerability maps or delineations of vulnerable zones in a map for monitoring purposes are difficult since ground water contamination depends upon numerous, complex interacti...

Institutions: Leibniz-Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries, Dept. Biology and Ecology of Fishes, Berlin, Germany 2 European Commission, Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC), AGRIFISH Unit, Ispra (VA), Italy Danish Institute for Fisheries Research, Dept. of Inland Fisheries, Silkeborg, Denmark Radboud University Nijmegen, In...

1. General Background for Agro-Ecology 1.1. The Field of Ecology 1.2. Specifics of Agro-Ecology 2. Environmental Resources of Food Supply 3. Environmental Constrains on Food Production 4. Loss of Biological Diversity and its Potential Impact on Food Production 4.1. General causes of Biodiversity losses 4.2 Impact on Food Production 5. Water for Agriculture and Food Production 6. Energy use in F...

The Modified Arkansas Off-Stream Reservoir Analysis (MARORA) model estimates the economics of on-farm reservoirs and other water conservation improvements in alternative ground water situations. With restricted ground water supply, a combination of different water conservation methods is estimated to provide the greatest economic return. On-farm reservoirs are not economical if ground water is ...

The WKB and instanton answers for the tunnel splitting of the ground state in a symmetric double well potential are both reduced to an expression involving only the functionals of the potential, without the need for solving any auxilliary problems. This formula is applied to simple model problems. The prefactor for the splitting in the text book by Landau and Lifshitz is amended so as to apply ...

Pastoralism is a major agricultural activity in drier environments, and can directly and indirectly impact native species in those areas. We investigated how the supply of an artificial watering point to support grazing livestock affected movement and activity patterns of the Australian sleepy lizard (Tiliqua rugosa) during a drought year. We observed 23 adult lizards; six had access to a dam, ...

Ground water recharge is often estimated through the calibration of ground water flow models. We examine the nature of calibration errors by considering some simple mathematical and numerical calculations. From these calculations, we conclude that calibrating a steady-state ground water flow model to water level extremes yields estimates of recharge that have the same value as the time-varying ...

The Water Framework Directive is a major regulatory reform of water resources management within the European Union. Integrated catchment management plans must be prepared for all river basins, in order to achieve 'good ecological status' in all EU waters. Ecological status is a broader measure of water quality than the chemical and biological measures that were previously dominant. The Directiv...

an investigation on the thermal performance of the soil as geothermal heat energy storage medium has been conducted. the thermal characteristics of the soil storage and the heat transfer from a heat exchanger in the soil, surrounding and bottom surface will be discussed. this investigation forms a contribution to a project to realize such storage to be charged from a solar heating system. this ...