Topic
Water scarcity
About: Water scarcity is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 11579 publications have been published within this topic receiving 228756 citations. The topic is also known as: water shortage.
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TL;DR: An "ensemble-based approach" of indicators is assembled representing water usage spanning different electricity-generation technologies based on previously published works in an attempt to depict the level or lack of detail in current large-scale energy-sector water-usage data.
105 citations
TL;DR: The inclusion of women in watershed-based water management as a response to climate change is discussed in this article, where the authors focus on community engagement and particularly women's inclusion in water management, and discuss South-North initiatives and models for community-based environmental and climate change education.
105 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the relative impact of various policies in the agricultural and water sectors on water and food security is analyzed to understand their linkages with water issues, and to analyze their relative impact on water allocation and use.
Abstract: Several recent studies warn that under ‘Business-as-Usual’ a water crisis is impending, suggesting that appropriate actions need to be taken on the water supply and demand side. While many measures to alleviate water scarcity are within the water sector, it is increasingly recognized that many drivers, policies and institutions outside the water sector have large and real implications on how water is being allocated and used. Important drivers for water use include population and income growth, urbanization, trade and other macroeconomic policies, environmental regulations and climate policy. While some of these processes and trends, especially those at global level, may prove difficult to influence directly, it is important to understand their linkages with water issues to analyze the relative impact of various policies in the agricultural and water sectors on water and food security.
105 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigated the combined impacts on irrigated agricultural food supply from reduced, more variable and more saline water supply for a representative semi-arid irrigation region and showed that ignoring these combined water-related climate effects leads to results that overlook thresholds where the structure of production and cost incurred fundamentally change above certain levels of variability and salinity.
105 citations
TL;DR: Water shortage is a major constraint to sustaining and increasing the productivity of rice-wheat systems in Asia as mentioned in this paper, and many technologies appear to save substantial amounts of water through reducing irrigation water requirement, but whether these are true water savings is uncertain.
Abstract: Water shortage is a major constraint to sustaining and increasing the productivity of rice-wheat systems. Saving water can be elusive in that reducing seepage, percolation and runoff losses from fi elds does not necessarily save water if it can be recaptured at some other temporal or spatial scale, for example by groundwater pumping. Many technologies appear to save substantial amounts of water through reducing irrigation water requirement, but whether these are true water savings is uncertain as components of the water balance have not been quantifi ed. Such technologies include laser levelling, direct drilling, raised beds, non-ponded rice culture and irrigation scheduling. It is questionable whether puddling saves water. Reducing non-benefi cial evaporation losses is a true water saving, and optimal planting time of rice to avoid the period of highest evaporative demand and changing to non-ponded rice culture can save signifi cant amounts of water. However, moving away from puddled, ponded to more aerobic rice culture sometimes brings new production problems. Furthermore, farmers faced with unreliable water supplies need to store water on their fi elds as insurance, and puddling assists retention of water during the rice crop. Rehabilitation and improvement of canal and power systems in Asia, funded by charging according to use, are required to facilitate adoption of many water saving technologies. Australian farmers pay fi xed plus volumetric charges for water to cover the cost of infrastructure and operation of irrigation systems, which are continuously being improved to provide water on demand and minimise losses. They are able to plan their plantings based on knowledge of the likely amount of irrigation water available each season and crop water use requirement, and thus avoid wasting water and fi nancial loss by overplanting and crop failure. Such approaches have the potential to increase production and water productivity in Asia, however the challenge would be to apply them in an equitable way that benefi ts many millions of subsistence farmers.
105 citations