[1] Past land use changes have greatly impacted global water resources, with often opposing effects on water quantity and quality. Increases in rain-fed cropland (460%) and pastureland (560%) during the past 300 years from forest and grasslands decreased evapotranspiration and increased recharge (two orders of magnitude) and streamflow (one order of magnitude). However, increased water quantity...

BACKGROUND In arid and semi-arid countries there are often large areas where groundwater is brackish and where people have to obtain water from irrigation canals for all uses, including domestic ones. An alternative to drawing drinking water directly from irrigation canals or village water reservoirs is to use the water that has seeped from the irrigation canals and irrigated fields and that ha...

This paper describes a software tool called Hydro Planner, being developed as part of CSIRO’s Water for a Healthy Country National Research Flagship Program. The main purpose of Hydro Planner is to enable urban water planners and managers to adopt a systems approach to obtain an improved understanding of how water, wastewater and stormwater systems interact with each other and with natural wate...

BACKGROUND Urban slums in developing countries that are not recognized by the government often lack legal access to municipal water supplies. This results in the creation of insecure "informal" water distribution systems (i.e., community-run or private systems outside of the government's purview) that may increase water-borne disease risk. We evaluate an informal water distribution system in a ...

As part of the determination of the ecological Reserve for rivers in South Africa (National Water Act, 1998), flow requirements are assessed for maintenance low flow, drought low flow and flood conditions. Since water quantity and water quality are often closely linked, it is necessary to ensure that in setting the recommended flow regime, the appropriate water quality will be attained. This pa...

Despite broad interest in using payment for ecosystem services to promote changes in the use of natural capital, there are few expost assessments of impacts of payment for ecosystem services programs on ecosystem service provision, program cost, and changes in livelihoods resulting from program participation. In this paper, we evaluate the Paddy Land-to-Dry Land (PLDL) program in Beijing, China...

In the absence of available surface water in semi-arid areas, groundwater has become the main water resource for various purposes. In many places in southern India, groundwater even is the only source of drinking water in rural areas. Therefore, quality and quantity aspects of groundwater management constitute acute issues for the well-being of Indian rural populations. This study proposes to u...