A Review Of Management Strategies For Salt Prone Land And Water Resources In Iran

Approximately half of the irrigated area of Iran falls under different types of salt-affected soils and average yield losses may be as high as 50 percent. Slightly and moderately salt-affected soils are mostly found on the piedmonts at the foot of the Elburz (Alborz) Mountains in the northern part of the country. The soils having severe to extreme salinity are predominantly located in the Central Plateau, the Khuzestan and Southern Coastal Plains and the Caspian Coastal Plain. The process of salinization of the surface water resources is mainly due to natural conditions, and to a lesser extent, to the discharge of drainage water into the river systems. Estimates show that about 6.7 km3 of brackish water flow annually through 12 major rivers. There is no straightforward solution to the complex problems of salt-induced soil and water resources degradation in Iran. The approaches addressing the management of these resources need to be multidimensional and must take into account biophysical and environmental conditions of the target areas as well as livelihood aspects of the associated communities.

The prosperity and national security of the United States depend directly on the prosperity and stability of both partner and competing countries around the world. Today, U.S. interests are under rising pressure from water scarcity, extreme weather events and water-driven ecological change in key geographies of strategic interest to the U.S. Those water-driven stresses are undermining economic productivity, weakening governance systems and fraying social cohesion in scores of countries and, in the process, undermining the vitality of rural livelihoods, fostering local and ethnic conflicts, driving broad migratory movements and contributing to the growth of insurgencies and terrorist networks. While the U.S. intelligence community has steadily expanded natural resource concerns in their global threat analyses, our overseas development assistance remains locked into provision of water and hygienic services rather than responding to the full sweep of global water challenges including governance and policy failures, growing conflicts over water and the need for promoting sustainable transboundary water arrangements in partner countries. A fundamental departure from the past is urgently needed. Based on 18 case studies, Water, Security and U.S. Foreign Policy provides an analytical framework to help policy makers, scholars and researchers studying the intersection of U.S. foreign policy with the environment and sustainability issues, interpret the impacts of water-driven social disruptions on the stability of partner governments and U.S. interests abroad. The book also delivers specific recommendations to reorient U.S. development and diplomatic engagements that can forestall and prevent social disruptions and ensuing threats to U.S. prosperity and national security.

This book focuses on soil and water conservation at global scale. It is a serious environmental problem that will threaten the socio-economic well-being of the majority of global population in future. The book examines the current situation of land degradation in multiple regions of the world and offers alternative approaches to solve the problems through sharing advanced technologies and lessons learned. It provides comprehensive assessment on characteristics, level and effect of degradation in different regions. It’s a highly informative reference both for researchers and graduate students.

The book aims to initiate a sustainable use of land and water resources in Central Asia by the transfer of scientific methods. It deals with the most advanced methods worldwide for better monitoring and management of water and land resources. We offer an array of methods of measuring, assessing, forecasting, utilizing and controling processes in agricultural landscapes. These are laboratory and field measurement methods, methods of resource evaluation, functional mapping and risk assessment, and remote sensing methods for monitoring and modeling large areas. The book contains methods and results of data analysis and ecosystem modeling, of bioremediation of soil and water, field monitoring of soils, and methods and technologies for optimizing land use systems as well. The chapter authors are inventors and advocators of novel transferrable methods. The book starts with an analysis of the current state of water and land resources. Finally concrete proposals for the applicability of novel methods are given.

The Karkheh River Basin is the third largest basin in Iran after Karoon and Dez, and occupies a strategic position on the western boundary of the country. The basin has seen remarkable ancient feats of engineering, and has a long history of wheat and barley production, complemented by horticulture. With the growth of the modern nation-state of Iran, water development has progressed steadily in tandem with rising populations and urbanization. The report aims to understand the historical setting and present situation of water development and allocation, in relation to rural development and agrarian policy. It provides the contextual backdrop for further research on the management of water to improve livelihoods in the basin through integrated and sustainable management of land and water resources. It provides further information on the changes in surface flows out of the component subbasins and looks at the development, use and consequences of groundwater abstraction.

Focusing on mixed crop-livestock farming systems of sub-Saharan Africa, this review brings together the available knowledge in the various components of the livestock and water sectors. Through an analysis of livestock-water interactions, promising strategies and interventions to improve Livestock Water Productivity are proposed. In the biophysical domain, the numerous interventions relate to feed, water and animal management. These are interlinked with interventions in the socio-political-economic domain. The paper identifies critical research and development gaps in terms of methodologies for quantifying water productivity and integrating different scales, and also in terms of institutions and policies.

In Burkina Faso, at least 1,700 small reservoirs have been constructed, most of them during the last 30 years. Numerous and scattered, these beneficial multipurpose systems combine productive with domestic water uses. However, their environmental and health impacts remain insufficiently documented. This report combines data from different sources into syntheses and national maps, with a focus on water-related diseases. The mitigation of negative impacts requires an integrated approach to specifically identify the enhancing and limiting factors that influence environmental impacts and the transmission of diseases around reservoirs. Public awareness campaigns need to accompany the promotion of preventive and curative measures and the development of alternative water sources for domestic supply.

The aim in this paper was to present the details of an economic modeling exercise conducted on the Musi Catchment of the Krishna Basin. The model has the unique characteristic of being able to value the water used on individual crops and in different regions. Thus, the individual values of water used to produce different crops, grown over two different seasons and over five very different regions within a catchment, were determined. This is a significant improvement over previous attempts, where a single value of water in a catchment was derived regardless of what it is used for, when it was used and where it used in the catchment. In addition to the agricultural valuation process, some account was made for the other uses of water and how they should be valued. The worth of these findings cannot be underestimated as the results are useful to those who need to allocate scarce water supplies between competing uses within a catchment. The assumptions underlying the model, the data used and the results and implications drawn are fully detailed in this paper. This model was connected to a hydrological model and used to simulate various scenarios on the water situation facing users in the basin. This model is the forerunner of similar modeling attempts on similar problems in other regions of the Krishna Basin and in the Murray Darling Basin of Australia.