Kenya over the last few decades, and the change from a nomadic lifestyle to communally owned ranches, wildlife in the Samburu District is under threat from deforestation, land degradation, overgrazing by livestock, and unsustainable water use. Alexander Njue, who is also involved in a separate Earthwatchsponsored project studying the wildlife habitats in this area, hopes that wildlife can also ...

In systems experiencing water scarcity and consequent intermittent supply, users often adopt private tanks that collect water during service periods and supply users when the service is not available. The tank may be fed by gravity or by private pumping stations depending on the network pressure level. Once water resources are collected, the tank can supply users by gravity if it is located on ...

Nonpoint source (NPS) watershed projects often fail to meet expectations for water quality improvement because of lag time, the time elapsed between adoption of management changes and the detection of measurable improvement in water quality in the target water body. Even when management changes are well-designed and fully implemented, water quality monitoring efforts may not show definitive res...

Vegetation deterioration and soil loss are the main causes of more precipitation leakages and surface water shortages in degraded karst areas. In order to improve the utilization of water resources in such regions, water storage engineering has been considered; however, site selection and cost associated with the special karstic geological structure have made this difficult. According to the pr...

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, ...

Water allocation models, sometimes referred to as water availability models, are critical tools for effective water resources management. Effective water allocation models allow policy-makers and managers to gain insight into the potential consequences of system changes, be they regulatory changes, infrastructure changes, climatic or other physical changes. Water allocation models are also used...

Difficulties related to the group decision-making process in the water supply sector, such as physical and economic losses, irrational use of water and maintenance costs, highlight the need to develop procedures to support decisions, reducing unnecessary water use and wastage. This study focused on the rational use of water resources and reduction of water losses, based on the assumption that i...

This paper presents an optimization model to simulate short-term pair-wise spot-market trading of surface water abstraction licenses (water rights). The approach uses a node-arc multicommodity formulation that tracks individual supplier-receiver transactions in a water resource network. This enables accounting for transaction costs between individual buyer-seller pairs and abstractor-specific r...

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...