Surface-water availability, Marshall County, Alabama

1975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joe R. Harkins
1975 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marvin E. Davis ◽  
Alfred L. Knight

Climate ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (6) ◽  
pp. 92
Author(s):  
Tewodros R. Godebo ◽  
Marc A. Jeuland ◽  
Christopher J. Paul ◽  
Dagnachew L. Belachew ◽  
Peter G. McCornick

This work aims to assess water quality for irrigated agriculture, alongside perceptions and adaptations of farmers to climate change in the Main Ethiopian Rift (MER). Climate change is expected to cause a rise in temperature and variability in rainfall in the region, reducing surface water availability and raising dependence on groundwater. The study data come from surveys with 147 farmers living in the Ziway–Shala basin and water quality assessments of 162 samples from groundwater wells and surface water. Most groundwater samples were found to be unsuitable for long term agricultural use due to their high salinity and sodium adsorption ratio, which has implications for soil permeability, as well as elevated bicarbonate, boron and residual sodium carbonate concentrations. The survey data indicate that water sufficiency is a major concern for farmers that leads to frequent crop failures, especially due to erratic and insufficient rainfall. An important adaptation mechanism for farmers is the use of improved crop varieties, but major barriers to adaptation include a lack of access to irrigation water, credit or savings, appropriate seeds, and knowledge or information on weather and climate conditions. Local (development) agents are identified as vital to enhancing farmers’ knowledge of risks and solutions, and extension programs must therefore continue to promote resilience and adaptation in the area. Unfortunately, much of the MER groundwater that could be used to cope with declining viability of rainfed agriculture and surface water availability, is poor in quality. The use of saline groundwater could jeopardize the agricultural sector, and most notably commercial horticulture and floriculture activities. This study highlights the complex nexus of water quality and sufficiency challenges facing the agriculture sector in the region, and should help decision-makers to design feasible strategies for enhancing adaptation and food security.


2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 1859-1875 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alemu Ademe Bekele ◽  
Santosh Murlidhar Pingale ◽  
Samuel Dagalo Hatiye ◽  
Alemayehu Kasaye Tilahun

Hydrology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Sergio A. Rentería-Guevara ◽  
Jesús G. Rangel-Peraza ◽  
Abraham E. Rodríguez-Mata ◽  
Leonel E. Amábilis-Sosa ◽  
Antonio J. Sanhouse-García ◽  
...  

River basin delineation can be inappropriate to determine surface water availability in a country, even if it is established by its water authority. This is because the effect of agricultural and urban infrastructure in runoff direction is ignored, and the anthropogenic changes in hydrography and topography features distort the runoff. This situation is really important because water rights are granted based on volumes that are not physically accessible. The existence of this problem is demonstrated through a case of study: the Culiacan River Basin in Mexico. To overcome such a situation, this study poses criteria to revise official river basin configurations and to delineate new river basins based on digital elevation models, vector files of agricultural infrastructure, and extensive field verification. Significant differences were noticed in surface water availability calculated under distinct river basin delineations.


2014 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 2933-2965 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. K. Weiskel ◽  
D. M. Wolock ◽  
P. J. Zarriello ◽  
R. M. Vogel ◽  
S. B. Levin ◽  
...  

Abstract. Runoff-based indicators of terrestrial water availability are appropriate for humid regions, but have tended to limit our basic hydrologic understanding of drylands – the dry-sub-humid, semi-arid, and arid regions which presently cover nearly half of the global land surface. In response, we introduce an indicator framework that gives equal weight to humid and dryland regions, accounting fully for both vertical (precipitation + evapotranspiration) and horizontal (groundwater + surface-water) components of the hydrologic cycle in any given location – as well as fluxes into and out of landscape storage. We apply the framework to a diverse hydroclimatic region (the conterminous USA), using a distributed water-balance model consisting of 53 400 networked landscape hydrologic units. Our model simulations indicate that about 21% of the conterminous USA either generated no runoff or consumed runoff from upgradient sources on a mean-annual basis during the 20th century. Vertical fluxes exceeded horizontal fluxes across 76% of the conterminous area. Long-term average total water availability (TWA) during the 20th century, defined here as the total influx to a landscape hydrologic unit from precipitation, groundwater, and surface water, varied spatially by about 400 000-fold, a range of variation ~100 times larger than that for mean-annual runoff across the same area. The framework includes, but is not limited to classical, runoff-based approaches to water-resource assessment. It also incorporates and re-interprets the green-blue water perspective now gaining international acceptance. Implications of the new framework for hydrologic assessment and classification are explored.


Author(s):  
S. Ferrant ◽  
A. Selles ◽  
M. Le Page ◽  
A. AlBitar ◽  
S. Mermoz ◽  
...  

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Indian agriculture relies on monsoon rainfall and irrigation from surface and groundwater. The inter-annual variability of monsoon rainfalls is high, which forces South Indian farmers to adapt their irrigated area extents to local water availability. We are developing and testing an automatic methodology for monitoring spatio-temporal variations of irrigated crops in near real time based on Sentinel-1 and -2 data feed over the Telangana State, South India. These freely available radar and optical data are systematically acquired worldwide, over India since 2016, on a weekly basis. Their high spatial resolution (10&amp;ndash;20&amp;thinsp;m) are well adapted to the small size field crops that is common in India. We have focused first on drought prone areas, North of Hyderabad. Crop fraction remains low and varies widely (from 10 to 60%, ISRO-NRSC, Bhuvan). Those upstream areas, mainly irrigated with groundwater, are composed by less than 20% of irrigated areas during the dry season (Rabi, December to March) and up to 60% of the surface is used for crop production during the Kharif (June to November), which includes rainfed cotton and drip irrigated maize crops and inundated rice. A machine learning algorithm, the Random Forest (RF) method, was automatically used over 6 growing seasons (January to March and July to November, from 2016 to 2018) from the Sentinel-1&amp;amp;2 data stacked for each season, to create crop mapping at 10&amp;thinsp;m resolution over a study area located in the north of Hyderabad (210 by 110&amp;thinsp;km). Six seasonal land cover field surveys were used to train and validate the classifier, with a specific effort on rice and maize field sampling. The lowest irrigated area extents were found for driest conditions in Rabi 2016 and Kharif 2016, accounting for 3.5 and 5% with moderate classification confusion. This confusion decreases with the increase of irrigated crops areas during Rabi 2017. For this season, 22% of rice and 9% of irrigated crops were detected after heavy rainfall events in September 2017, which have filled surface water tanks (3.4% of the surface area) and groundwater (Central Groundwater Board observations). From this abundance situation, the surface water detected for each season decreased regularly to less than 0.3% together with the rice and irrigated area extents respectively from 22 to 11% and 10 to 3%, despite a good monsoon 2017. Groundwater level show similar trends, with a drop from 20 meters depth in October 2016 and 2017 to more than 30&amp;thinsp;m in June 2018 (more recent available data). The deficit of the monsoon 2018 will certainly bring this situation to a hydrological drought at the beginning of 2019, probably similar to the Rabi 2016 situation. The estimated Irrigated Water Demand (IWD) varies from 51 to 310&amp;thinsp;mm/season, depending on water availability. This methodology shows the potential of automatically monitoring, in near real time, with standard computers, irrigated area extents presenting fast high resolution variability. As it is based on standard global satellite acquisitions, it is foreseen to be used for other regions, for any studies on farmer’s adaptation to climate and hydrological variability, as a proxy to estimate irrigation water needs and water resources availability. In Telangana for instance, it provides an inventory of crop production and irrigation practices before the implementation of mega project infrastructures funded by this new state: - the Kâkâtiya tank restoration program to enhance monsoon runoff capture or the Kaleshwaram project to divert Godavari river water toward upstream Telangana region through tunnels and canals in 20 giant reservoirs.</p>


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