IU Indianapolis ScholarWorks :: Browsing by Subject "Water resources"

Browsing by Subject "Water resources"

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Common Property's Role in Water Resource Management
(Second International Conference on Property Rights, Economics and Environment, 1998) Blomquist, William
Since I was invited to speak about common-property arrangements in the management of water resources, I shall begin with a description of common-property arrangements. I will then turn to the relationship between the common property and regulatory-agency approaches to water resource management, addressing both its empirical manifestations and some theoretical bases for understanding them. Then I will consider the relationship between common-property and private-property or market arrangements, again analyzing that relationship from empirical and theoretical perspectives. When I use examples or illustrations in this brief presentation, they will have to do with groundwater basins in the United States since those are the empirical cases with which I am familiar. And throughout my remarks, I will be applying the analytical approach of institutional rational-choice analysis, and restating the work of many scholars who have worked in the field of common-property resources.
Getting Out of the Commons Trap: Variables, Process, and Results in Four Groundwater Basins
(Social Science Perspectives Journal, 1987) Blomquist, William
"Jointly-accessible resources used by multiple individuals are often endangered. Indeed, we call the supposedly inevitable destruction of such resources 'the tragedy of the commons'. Commons problems have been classified with other 'social traps' such as the collective action problem and the Prisoner's Dilemma game. Reasoning by analogy and metaphor from these other 'traps' has yielded a general prognosis of doom for the commons, escapable only via privatization of the resource or centralized public management. In fact, alternative organizations of resource use exist, and have led to resource preservation and even to resource enhancement. The question is how, and under what conditions, users of a common resource might collectively coordinate their behavior to avoid impending doom and enhance resource use without resort to either of the forms prescribed in the prevailing literature. Drawing upon the methods of institutional analysis and the experience of actual cases of commons management, this paper presents descriptive and quantitative evidence on: (a) the relevant characteristics of the settings in which resource users operate, (b) the steps taken in a process of resolution of a commons dilemma, and (c) the results obtained thus far by the users of groundwater basins in arid and heavily populated portions of southern California. The likelihood of successful resolution is compared across different settings, and the efficiency and equity of different public/private organizational form mixes are compared, as well."
Global Synthesis of Drought Effects on Food Legume Production
(PLOS, 2015-06-10) Daryanto, Stefani; Wang, Lixin; Jacinthe, Pierre-André; Department of Earth Sciences, School of Science
Food legume crops play important roles in conservation farming systems and contribute to food security in the developing world. However, in many regions of the world, their production has been adversely affected by drought. Although water scarcity is a severe abiotic constraint of legume crops productivity, it remains unclear how the effects of drought co-vary with legume species, soil texture, agroclimatic region, and drought timing. To address these uncertainties, we collected literature data between 1980 and 2014 that reported monoculture legume yield responses to drought under field conditions, and analyzed this data set using meta-analysis techniques. Our results showed that the amount of water reduction was positively related with yield reduction, but the extent of the impact varied with legume species and the phenological state during which drought occurred. Overall, lentil ( Lens culinaris ), groundnut ( Arachis hypogaea ), and pigeon pea ( Cajanus cajan ) were found to experience lower drought-induced yield reduction compared to legumes such as cowpea ( Vigna unguiculata ) and green gram ( Vigna radiate ). Yield reduction was generally greater when legumes experienced drought during their reproductive stage compared to during their vegetative stage. Legumes grown in soil with medium texture also exhibited greater yield reduction compared to those planted on soil of either coarse or fine texture. In contrast, regions and their associated climatic factors did not significantly affect legume yield reduction. In the face of changing climate, our study provides useful information for agricultural planning and research directions for development of drought-resistant legume species to improve adaptation and resilience of agricultural systems in the drought-prone regions of the world.
Global Synthesis of Drought Effects on Maize and Wheat Production
(PLOS, 2016-05-25) Daryanto, Stefani; Wang, Lixin; Jacinthe, Pierre-André; Department of Earth Sciences, School of Science
Drought has been a major cause of agricultural disaster, yet how it affects the vulnerability of maize and wheat production in combination with several co-varying factors (i.e., phenological phases, agro-climatic regions, soil texture) remains unclear. Using a data synthesis approach, this study aims to better characterize the effects of those co-varying factors with drought and to provide critical information on minimizing yield loss. We collected data from peer-reviewed publications between 1980 and 2015 which examined maize and wheat yield responses to drought using field experiments. We performed unweighted analysis using the log response ratio to calculate the bootstrapped confidence limits of yield responses and calculated drought sensitivities with regards to those co-varying factors. Our results showed that yield reduction varied with species, with wheat having lower yield reduction (20.6%) compared to maize (39.3%) at approximately 40% water reduction. Maize was also more sensitive to drought than wheat, particularly during reproductive phase and equally sensitive in the dryland and non-dryland regions. While no yield difference was observed among regions or different soil texture, wheat cultivation in the dryland was more prone to yield loss than in the non-dryland region. Informed by these results, we discuss potential causes and possible approaches that may minimize drought impacts.
The hidden costs of desert development
(SpringerLink, 2020-08) Luo, Lihui; Zhuang, Yanli; Zhao, Wenzhi; Duan, Quntao; Wang, Lixin; Earth Sciences, School of Science
Economic benefits and ecological restoration are the leading drivers of desert development through man-made oasis expansion. However, the sustainability of oasis expansion in combating desertification while promoting economic growth remains unclear, though such knowledge is critical for future desert development across the globe. To address this knowledge gap, a comprehensive assessment integrating meteorological, groundwater and remote-sensing data as well as groundwater simulation datasets was conducted to evaluate the spatial-temporal changes in the desert-oasis ecotone of northwest China over the past six decades. Desert development causes a rapid decline in the surrounding groundwater table, increases pollution in soil and groundwater and is associated with an increased frequency of strong sandstorms. Desert development seems to have improved the environment and promoted the economy, but there is a huge cost for the overexploitation of water resources and the transfer of pollution from surface to underground, which could cause deserts to degrade further.
Institutional And Policy Analysis Of River Basin Management: The Tarcoles River Basin, Costa Rica
(World Bank Group, 2005) Blomquist, William; Ballestero, Maureen; Bhat, Anjali; Kemper, Karin
This paper describes and analyzes the effort to institute river basin management in the Tárcoles basin of Costa Rica. Located in west-central Costa Rica, the Tárcoles basin represents 4.2 percent of the nation's total land area, but is home to half the nation's population and the metropolitan area of San José, the nation's capital and largest city. Water management issues include severe water pollution resulting from sewage, industrial waste discharges, agricultural runoff, and deforestation. In the early 1990s a locally-initiated effort established a river basin commission for the Río Grande de Tárcoles (CRGT), which was supported by the central government's environment ministry. Since the late 1990s, however, the DRGT has struggled through changes of leadership, inconsistent support from the central government, and waning participation from basin stakeholders. Despite several programs to arrest deforestation and encourage better industrial and agricultural practices, the basin's water problems continue largely unabated. The Tárcoles case is instructive about both the possibilities and the fragility of efforts to establish integrated water resource management at the river basin level.
Local Communities, Policy Prescriptions, and Watershed Management in Arizona, California, and Colorado
(International Association for the Study of Common Property, 2000) Schlager, Edella; Blomquist, William
For the past 25 years, since the National Water Commission published its final report, 'Water Policies for the Future,' prescriptions of the water policy literature have centered upon two themes: 1) 'the watershed' is the appropriate scale for organizing water resource management--although watersheds are regions to which political jurisdictions almost never correspond--because all water sources and uses within a watershed are interrelated; and 2) since watershed-scale decision-making structures do not exist to begin with, they should be created as soon as possible to bring together all 'stakeholders' and produce integrated watershed management plans that can be implemented efficiently, preferably through some form of watershed management authority. Despite the consistency of the message over the last quarter-century, the gap between prescription and practice is wide. On the other hand, our observation of water resource management activities in the western states has revealed that the development of regional watershed management is in fact occurring in several places, but in an altogether different manner--watershed-scale decision-making arrangements and management activities are being assembled in a variety of decentralized and polycentric forms that involve both linked and nested relationships among smaller organizations. Drawing upon political economy and institutional analysis literature, the paper provides a straightforward conceptual and analytical presentation to account for incremental and decentralized approaches to the development of regional-scale institutions as represented in four watersheds in California and Colorado.
The Local Groundwater Economy in Los Angeles County, California
(Indiana University, 1994) Blomquist, William
"The governance and management of water use in the United States generally, and in southern California in particular, are not organized as an ideal legal-rational centralized administration or as a perfectly competitive private market. This fact poses challenges to analysis that the local public economies (LPE) framework developed at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis helps to resolve. "The LPE framework enlarges the possibilities for descriptive and prescriptive analysis of interorganizational relations. It is based on the idea that an understanding of current arrangements is an important prerequisite to the issuance of prescriptions for reform. That view, which has informed work on metropolitan area governmental organization (e.g., ACIR, 1987), suggests that analysts 'begin to search for the nature of the order which exists in the complex of relationships among governmental units and abandon the assumption that all of these relationships are unique or random.' By searching for 'the nature of the order which exists' and 'an analysis of how the system works,' (Ostrom and Ostrom, 1965: 138) one can arrive at descriptions of current arrangements. Discussion of shortcomings and recommendations for improvements can follow, while the ultimate evaluations of the performance of public officials and governmental structures are left to citizens."
Observed increasing water constraint on vegetation growth over the last three decades
(Springer Nature, 2021-06-18) Jiao, Wenzhe; Wang, Lixin; Smith, William K.; Chang, Qing; Wang, Honglang; D’Odorico, Paolo; Earth and Environmental Sciences, School of Science
Despite the growing interest in predicting global and regional trends in vegetation productivity in response to a changing climate, changes in water constraint on vegetation productivity (i.e., water limitations on vegetation growth) remain poorly understood. Here we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of changes in water constraint on vegetation growth in the extratropical Northern Hemisphere between 1982 and 2015. We document a significant increase in vegetation water constraint over this period. Remarkably divergent trends were found with vegetation water deficit areas significantly expanding, and water surplus areas significantly shrinking. The increase in water constraints associated with water deficit was also consistent with a decreasing response time to water scarcity, suggesting a stronger susceptibility of vegetation to drought. We also observed shortened water surplus period for water surplus areas, suggesting a shortened exposure to water surplus associated with humid conditions. These observed changes were found to be attributable to trends in temperature, solar radiation, precipitation, and atmospheric CO2. Our findings highlight the need for a more explicit consideration of the influence of water constraints on regional and global vegetation under a warming climate.
Property Rights, Political Power, and the Management of Ground and Surface Water
(Western Political Science Association, 1997) Blomquist, William; Schlager, Edella
Among the more popular contemporary recommendations for improved watershed use and protection is conjunctive use of surface and underground water resources. Conjunctive use involves the coordination of surface water supplies and storage with groundwater supplies and storage, for purposes of sustainable watershed use and enhanced watershed protection. Among the several potential benefits that have been promoted by advocates of greater conjunctive use are: improved security of usable water supplies, lessened exposure to extreme events such as droughts and floods, reduced reliance on costly and environmentally disruptive surface water impoundments and distribution systems, and enhanced protection of aquatic life and habitat.

Browsing by Subject "Water resources"

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