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Sustainability
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Sustainable Water Resource Management in a Changing Climate
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Sustainable Water Resource Management in a Changing Climate

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Water Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 September 2022) | Viewed by 6834

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Gunnar Mallon

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Cultural Geography, Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, 9747 AD Groningen, The Netherlands
Interests: water quality; water footprints; climate change; hydrochemistry; water resource management; paleoclimatology; paleoecology; wetland ecology; moss ecology
Dr. Erik W. Meijles

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Faculty of Spatial Sciences, University of Groningen, PO Box 800, 9700 AV Groningen, The Netherlands
Interests: hillslope and catchment hydrology; landscape management; river geomorphology; historical hydrology; runoff generation

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Anthropogenic climate change is an inevitable reality that is increasingly affecting more people around the globe at an alarming rate. Local and regional precipitation patterns have changed and will continue to do so, decreasing the reliability and predictability of water resources. As humanity heavily relies on water for agriculture and manufacturing, as well as energy production and for domestic use, there is a greater need to adapt to the new reality of a changing climate. An increasing shift from green to blue water consumption, as a result of a scarcity in the quantity and seasonal distribution of rain water, has increased the economic and environmental cost of production, often making it unprofitable in the long run. Furthermore, the cost is mostly carried by the producer rather than the consumer, leading to greater pressure on often scarce local resources. Traditional crop production may become less viable and no longer be sustainable, unless new means of water resource management are introduced or alternative crops are planted. These factors lead to the need for better technological solutions to changes in water availability, as well as a re-evaluation of societal and cultural interactions with limited water resources.

The Special Issue, therefore, concentrates on the sustainable management of water resources in light of ongoing climate change, from a technological, agricultural, economic, and societal perspective. We welcome papers that are related, but not limited, to any of the following topics:

  • Water footprints and the value of water
  • Water management for sustainable agriculture
  • Technological solutions to the management of scarce water resources
  • The social impact of changes in water availability
  • Cultural adaptations in water resource management to a changing climate
  • Sustainable domestic water usage

Dr. Gunnar Mallon
Dr. Erik W. Meijles
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • water resource management
  • climate change
  • water footprint
  • sustainable agriculture
  • water scarcity
  • water availability
  • cultural adaptation
  • water resources
  • food security
  • cultural water
  • value of water
  • economics of water
  • domestic water

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 3955 KiB  
Article
Towards a Decision-Making Approach of Sustainable Water Resources Management Based on Hydrological Modeling: A Case Study in Central Morocco
by Abdennabi Alitane, Ali Essahlaoui, Ann Van Griensven, Estifanos Addisu Yimer, Narjisse Essahlaoui, Meriame Mohajane, Celray James Chawanda and Anton Van Rompaey
Sustainability 2022, 14(17), 10848; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su141710848 - 31 Aug 2022
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 2066
Abstract
Water is one of the fundamental resources of economic prosperity, food security, human habitats, and the driver of many global phenomena, such as droughts, floods, contaminated water, disease, poverty, and hunger. Therefore, its deterioration and its inadequate use lead to heavy impacts on [...] Read more.
Water is one of the fundamental resources of economic prosperity, food security, human habitats, and the driver of many global phenomena, such as droughts, floods, contaminated water, disease, poverty, and hunger. Therefore, its deterioration and its inadequate use lead to heavy impacts on environmental resources and humans. Thus, we argue that to address these challenges, one can rely on hydrological management strategies. The objective of this study is to simulate and quantify water balance components based on a hydrologic model with available data at the R’Dom watershed in Morocco. For this purpose, the hydrologic model used is the Soil and Water Assessment Tool + (SWAT+) model. The streamflow model simulations were run at the monthly time step (from 2002 to 2016), during the calibration period 2002–2009, the coefficient of determination (R2) and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) values were 0.84 and 0.70, respectively, and 0.81 and 0.65, respectively, during the validation period 2010–2016. The results of the water balance modeling in the watershed during the validation period revealed that the average annual precipitation was about 484 mm, and out of this, 5.75 mm came from the development of irrigation in agricultural lands. The evapotranspiration accounted for about 72.28% of the input water of the watershed, while surface runoff (surq_gen) accounted for 12.04%, 11.90% was lost by lateral flow (latq), and 4.14% was lost by groundwater recharge (perco). Our approach is designed to capture a real image of a case study; zooming into other case studies with similar environments to uncover the situation of water resources is highly recommended. Moreover, the outcomes of this study will be helpful for policy and decision-makers, and it can be a good path for researchers for further directions based on the SWAT model to simulate water balance to achieve adequate management of water resources. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Water Resource Management in a Changing Climate)
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19 pages, 325 KiB  
Article
On Sustainable Consumption: The Implications of Trade in Virtual Water for the EU’s Food Security
by Alina Petronela Alexoaei, Valentin Cojanu and Cristiana-Ioana Coman
Sustainability 2021, 13(21), 11952; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su132111952 - 29 Oct 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1909
Abstract
The paper addresses the sustainability of the European Union’s food consumption through a water footprint assessment of selected vulnerable agricultural imports from a two-pronged perspective: (1) the degree of the EU’s dependence on global green water resources embedded in the apparent consumption of [...] Read more.
The paper addresses the sustainability of the European Union’s food consumption through a water footprint assessment of selected vulnerable agricultural imports from a two-pronged perspective: (1) the degree of the EU’s dependence on global green water resources embedded in the apparent consumption of selected water-intensive agricultural products and (2) the degree of commitment of countries of origin to sustainability policies. The study argues that the vulnerability of the EU’s agricultural imports to water risks can be estimated based on the amount of green water consumed in producing crops in the countries of origin. The results show that the EU’s consumption of agricultural goods is highly dependent on virtual water imports for all six selected vulnerable agricultural products, from the lowest footprint for bananas (5 mil. km3) to the largest for coffee (69 mil. km3). The analysis also points to a greater concern for quality issues in the countries of origin (56.53%) relative to management (26.52%) and availability issues (16.85%), but the latter are to arise in importance for sustainable production in the years to come. Our conclusions contribute to building up a responsible commitment towards (1) development of environmental policies and the design of practical measures by providing quantitative information that makes problems more clearly defined and tangible, and (2) assessing the outcome of policies and practical measures by understanding their effects on the sustainability of food consumption. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Water Resource Management in a Changing Climate)
27 pages, 3097 KiB  
Article
Info-Gap Models for Optimal Multi-Year Management of Regional Water Resources Systems under Uncertainty
by Mashor Housh and Tomer Aharon
Sustainability 2021, 13(6), 3152; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su13063152 - 13 Mar 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1995
Abstract
The common practices for the planning and management of Water Resources Systems (WSSs) have been challenged in the last few decades by global climate change processes, which are observed around the world in increasing frequencies. Climate change is manifested by climate variability, temperature [...] Read more.
The common practices for the planning and management of Water Resources Systems (WSSs) have been challenged in the last few decades by global climate change processes, which are observed around the world in increasing frequencies. Climate change is manifested by climate variability, temperature increase, and extreme events such as droughts and floods, which have a decisive effect on natural resource availability and in turn on water quality. Historical records may not be sufficient to reliably account for uncertain future predictions under climate change conditions. While such highly uncertain situations become the “normal” case worldwide, the traditional practices of probabilistic risk measures cannot be used to appropriately quantify the uncertain phenomena under non-stationarity conditions. To better account for uncertain future conditions, the objective of this study is to develop a water management model based on Info-Gap Decision Theory (IGDT) using optimization under deep uncertainty conditions. The Info-Gap theory is a framework that measures the confidence in the operational decisions by quantifying the robustness to uncertainty without accounting for any probabilistic data. To demonstrate the method as a tool to better guide the long-term sustainable operation of the water supply system under uncertain future conditions, we applied the Info-Gap model to the Sea of Galilee (SoG) regional WSS, which is a significant part of the Israeli National Water System (INWS). For Israel, which is, like other Middle East semi-arid regions, prone to dry conditions and limited water availability, there are well-founded concerns that prolonged periods of drought lie ahead, as a consequence of the global climate change processes. This study contributes a management tool for decision making under deep uncertainty to improve the decision-making process and better adapt to unpredictable uncertain future conditions. We demonstrate how the IGDT could be formulated and used to analyze WSSs under different settings and demonstrate how decisions could be derived from the IGDT formulation. We also show a sensitivity analysis for the obtained solutions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Water Resource Management in a Changing Climate)
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