Sustainability Commons^™

Droughtscape, Spring 2007, National Drought Mitigation Center

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

2007 Spring Drought Outlook & Winter Summary

VegDRI Expands to 15 States, Refines Views

DroughtScape

State Spotlight: Utah

International Panel Foresees Drought as Part of Climate Change

NIDIS Portal Advancing

Allagash Wilderness Waterway Working Group On Structure, Management And Oversight: Choosing Common Ground And Moving Ahead, Allagash Wilderness Waterway Working Group

Maine History & Policy Development

In his June 19, 2006, Executive Order, Governor John E. Baldacci directed the Working Group to “offer its best guidance and advice to the Governor respecting the long-term governance, management, and oversight structure for the Allagash Wilderness Waterway” (AWW). In the intervening six months the members of the Working Group have engaged in an examination of the forty-year history of the Waterway and an analysis of the conditions and circumstance that led to the Governor’s Executive Order. We have reviewed documentation of the AWW history, taken testimony at numerous public meetings and hearings, conducted correspondence with members of the several …

Allagash Wilderness Waterway Working Group On Structure, Management And Oversight: Choosing Common Ground And Moving Ahead (Executive Summary), Allagash Wilderness Waterway Working Group

Maine History & Policy Development

In his June 19, 2006, Executive Order, Governor John E. Baldacci directed the Working Group to “offer its best guidance and advice to the Governor respecting the long-term governance, management, and oversight structure for the Allagash Wilderness Waterway” (AWW). In the intervening six months the members of the Working Group have engaged in an examination of the forty-year history of the Waterway and an analysis of the conditions and circumstance that led to the Governor’s Executive Order. We have reviewed documentation of the AWW history, taken testimony at numerous public meetings and hearings, conducted correspondence with members of the several …

Selected Lid Projects In New England, New England Environmental Finance Center

Planning

Examples of low impact development (LID) projects in each state in New England.

Agricultural Climatology, Kenneth G. Hubbard

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

With the diversification of the U.S. economy over the past century, agriculture has changed. We can say the farm sizes have increased over time, the number of farmers and those employed in farming have decreased over time, and as the economy has grown the relative contribution of agriculture to the total economy has decreased due to growth in other sectors. The farm prices have not changed significantly over many years while costs for energy, machinery, and land have generally increased. The combination of these factors has generally narrowed the profit margin and the highest productivity will no longer ensure the …

Droughtscape, Winter 2007, Kelly Smith

DroughtScape: Quarterly Newsletter of the National Drought Mitigation Center (2007–2023)

Subscribe Now!

Policy Update: NIDIS is Law. What’s Next?

What Would You Like to See?

TX, OK, Plains, Southwest Hardest Hit in 2006

Climatologically Speaking, How Bad Was It?

State Spotlight: Arizona

Drought Decision-Support Tools Evolving

Policy Tools For Smart Growth In New England, New England Environmental Finance Center

Smart Growth

Across New England communities have been experiencing a rapid outward surge of development away from our community and downtown centers. Effects of sprawl include a loss of wildlife habitat, farm and timber lands; increased costs of community services and higher taxes; auto-dependency, longer commutes, and increased congestion; increases in air and water pollution; a sedentary lifestyle and increased obesity; and losses to one’s sense of place and social ties.

State-level responses to sprawl have surfaced throughout New England in recent years. This report describes 11 examples of these responses, representing all six New England states and a diversity of recent …

Augusta Me: The New Bridge Begets A New Planned Neighborhood, Molly Pulsifer, Richard Barringer

Planning

Construction of a new Third Bridge over the Kennebec River in Augusta offered the prospect of a new and handsome gateway to the city. Further, the resulting change in traffic patterns offered the City the chance to plan for a pattern of development quite different from what the city had experienced for the past half-century. The case study describes the planning and construction of the new bridge and corridors that re-routed traffic out of Augusta’s downtown and older neighborhoods, and created the opportunity for planned development adjacent to the corridor created by the new bridge. It goes on to describe …

On The Spatial Nature Of The Groundwater Pumping Externality, Nicholas Brozovic, David L. Sunding, David Zilberman

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Most existing economic analyses of optimal groundwater management use single-cell aquifer models, which assume that an aquifer responds uniformly and instantly to ground- water pumping. This paper demonstrates how spatially explicit aquifer response equations from the water resources engineering literature may be embedded in a general economic framework. Calibration of our theoretical model to published economic studies of spe- cific aquifers demonstrates that, by averaging basin drawdown across the entire resource, existing studies generally understate the magnitude of the groundwater pumping external- ity relative to spatially explicit models. For the aquifers studied, the drawdown predicted by single- cell models may …

Amherst Ma: A New Village Plan For Atkins Corner, Maggie Jones, Richard Barringer

Planning

The case study describes a successful smart growth initiative in the town of Amherst, Massachusetts, at an intersection known as Atkins Corner. The initiative grew from two motivating factors: the necessity of realigning Route 116, a major north-to-south artery through the town, to decrease traffic accidents at the intersection and improve pedestrian safety; and a desire on the part of Hampshire College and the Town to create a village center at the intersection. Through a consensus-building process involving key town officials, Hampshire College, neighbors, and the design firm of Dodson Associates, agreement on the project was reached with local stakeholders …

Optimal Management Of Groundwater Over Space And Time, Nicholas Brozovic, David L. Sunding, David Zilberman

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

For nearly half a century, groundwater has been portrayed in the economic literature as a typical common property resource. Numerous studies of groundwater extraction have analyzed the externalities imposed by users on each other. A large body of work offers clear prescriptions in the form of optimal policy instruments, and a similarly large body of work advocates the needlessness of any centralized intervention. Yet existing theoretical models of groundwater extraction implicitly make two strong assumptions about the underlying behavior of the resource. First, the spatial distribution of resource users is assumed to be irrelevant. Second, path-independence of the resource is …

Promoting Low Impact Development In Your Community, New England Environmental Finance Center

Planning

Low Impact Development (LID) is an approach to stormwater management and site development that is gaining popularity throughout the country. Its attractiveness lies in its potential to lessen off-site stormwater impacts, reduce costs to municipalities and developers, and promote development that is “softer on the land” compared with typical traditional development. The approach, which is applicable to residential, commercial and industrial projects, and in urban, suburban and rural settings, often is linked with efforts by governments and citizens to foster more sustainable communities.

Facilitating The Development Of The Strawberry Industry In Western Australia, Dennis Phillips, Aileen Reid

Horticulture research reports

Horticulture Australia Project No. BS05001 Annual report 2005/06

This is the first of three annual reports for the Horticulture Australia project BS05001 — ‘Facilitating the development of the strawberry industry in Western Australia’. This project is managed by the Strawberry Growers Association of WA Inc. and the work is being done in collaboration with the Department of Agriculture and Food WA (DAFWA). The project has been funded by voluntary contributions from the W.A. Strawberry Producers Committee, Toolangi Strawberry Runner Growers Co-operative and DAFWA with matching funding from Horticulture Australia Ltd (HAL). The project has been funded for three years, 2005, …

Zero Effluent Stretch Target (Zest), Orla O'Connor

Theses

The goals of this project were to assess the viability of avoiding water use and of “cascading” water uses, i.e. using outlet water from one process in another activity, possibly with some purification, including the upgrading of the final effluent stream for internal reuse. Water use has been inventoried at FMC Biopolymer, Cork. Avoidance and reduction measures were identified that could reduce water consumption from 49m /hr to 19 m /hr (a reduction in excess of 60%), with an annual saving in excess of €350,000. These projects were assessed for feasibility and implementation. Potential streams that could be subject to …

Risk And Consequence Analysis Focused On Biota Transfers Potentially Associated With Surface Water Diversions Between The Missouri River And Red River Basins, Greg Linder, Ed Little, Lynne Johnson, Chad Vishy, Bruce Peacock, Heather Goeddecke

United States Geological Survey: Publications

Section 1 provides a brief overview of the project, including a cursory summary of the history of the “Garrison Diversion” and how that history relates to this work focused on the analysis of risks and consequences potentially associated with interbasin biota transfers. The present study was initiated under the auspices of the Dakota Water Resources Act (DWRA) of 2000, which directed the Secretary of the Interior to conduct a comprehensive study of the water quality and quantity needs of the Red River Valley and the options for meeting those needs. As such, the Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) requested technical support …

Stormwater Utility Fees: Considerations & Options For Interlocal Stormwater Working Group (Iswg), New England Environmental Finance Center

Water

Stormwater utilities are a concept whose time seems to have arrived. Established by relatively few communities in the 1970s as a method of funding flood control measures, stormwater utilities now exist in over 400 municipalities and counties throughout the United States. During the next 10 years, their numbers are expected to swell dramatically – by one estimate to over 2,000 by the year 2014.

The reasons for this growth are multifold. Federal stormwater regulations passed in the 1980s (Phase I of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Program, or NPDES), motivated many larger communities to seek alternative funding sources and …

Stormwater Utility Fees: Considerations & Options For Interlocal Stormwater Working Group (Iswg), New England Environmental Finance Center

Economics and Finance

Stormwater utilities are a concept whose time seems to have arrived. Established by relatively few communities in the 1970s as a method of funding flood control measures, stormwater utilities now exist in over 400 municipalities and counties throughout the United States. During the next 10 years, their numbers are expected to swell dramatically – by one estimate to over 2,000 by the year 2014.

The reasons for this growth are multifold. Federal stormwater regulations passed in the 1980s (Phase I of the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Program, or NPDES), motivated many larger communities to seek alternative funding sources and …

Point-Of-Use Water Treatment Using Solar Pasteurization, Eric C. Robinson

Water Resources Professional Project Reports

This paper reviews waterborne disease and a number of point-of-use water treatments emphasizing methods utilizing solar energy. This information was used to design two flow-through solar pasteurizers that were subsequently constructed for this project. The two solar water pasteurizers utilize a thermosiphon - water flow caused by the difference in density between two columns of water. The performance of the two panels was analyzed by measuring the input and output water temperatures, volume of water produced, and comparing this performance to the solar irradiance. The two solar water pasteurizers were fabricated at a respective cost of $134 and $214 and …

In Search Of Sustainable Water Management: International Lessons For The American West And Beyond, Douglas S. Kenney

Books, Reports, and Studies

This digital resource contains only an abstract, cover image and table of contents information from the published book.

Print copy of book is available in the University of Colorado’s Wise Law Library: http://lawpac.colorado.edu/record=b279300~S0

Contents: Water policy and cultural exchange : transferring lessons from around the world to the western United States / James L. Wescoat Jr. -- Roles for the public and private sectors in water allocation : lessons from around the world / Charles W. Howe, Helen Ingram -- Integrating environmental and other public values in water allocation and management decisions / David H. Getches, Sarah B. Van de …

An Analysis Of Simulated Long-Term Soil Moisture Data For Three Land Uses Under Contrasting Hydroclimatic Conditions In The Northern Great Plains, Rezaul Mamood, Kenneth G. Hubbard

High Plains Regional Climate Center: Staff Publications

Soil moisture (SM) plays an important role in land surface and atmosphere interactions. It modifies energy balance near the surface and the rate of water cycling between land and atmosphere. The lack of observed SM data prohibits understanding of SM variations at climate scales under varying land uses. However, with simulation models it is possible to develop a long-term SM dataset and study these issues. In this paper a water balance model is used to provide a quantitative assessment of SM climatologies for three land uses, namely, irrigated corn, rain-fed corn, and grass, grown under three hydroclimatic regimes in Nebraska. …

Land For Maine's Future Program: Increasing The Return On A Sound Public Investment, Richard Barringer, Hugh Coxe, Jack Kartez, Catherine Reilly, Jonathan Rubin

Economics and Finance

Maine is nowhere a more special place than in the quality of its landscape and the traditions of its land use. Among the mo st privately-owned of all the states, Maine’s natural diversity and beauty combine with its traditions of resource stewardship, open access, and appreciation of nature to distinguish it in the public mind and national imagination. In recent decades, however, these traditions have come under assault from the forces of economic and social change; and the people of Maine have responded. In 1986, Governor Joseph Brennan’s Special Commission on Outdoor Recreation recognized the growing threats to Maine’s natur …

Wheatbelt Waterwise = Saltwise : Gardening Guide, John Colwill, Juana Roe

Bulletins 4000 -

As a result of agricultural clearing, many country towns are now feeling the effects of rising groundwater and the salt that it carries. Salinity has been identified as Australia’s number one environmental problem. While most people think that salinity means land lost to agriculture, it also poses a serious threat to many country towns. A report for the Department of Agriculture in 2001 highlighted the need for simple and cost-effective salinity management strategies to be adopted in wheatbelt towns. These included water recycling, revegetation and more efficient water use.

Trust, Collaboration, And Financial Return In Conservation/Development Partnerships, New England Environmental Finance Center

Economics and Finance

In early 2002 the New England Environmental Finance Center hosted a series of roundtable discussions among municipal officials, residential developers, land trust representatives, and others about "Innovative Approaches to Land Conservation and Smart Growth". Among our observations was that for many of the over 20 conservation/development partnerships we discussed in the series, creation and maintenance of trust was central to success or failure of various stages of the partnership. This suggested a link between creation of trust and financial return for traditionally opposed project partners.

To further examine this matter, we interviewed 11 round table participants and asked questions about …

Smart Growth And Land Acquisition Priorities: A Cursory Review, New England Environmental Finance Center

Smart Growth

It is well-known and generally accepted that all undeveloped land in New England cannot forever be protected from development; nor would this be a desirable goal, as continued economic development and population growth are near certainties. For these and other reasons, private land trusts and government agencies generally use explicit criteria to prioritize their land acquisition activities and prospects.

Transboundary River Management In The Mekong River Basin: Key Issues And Lessons For Western U.S. Water Management, Jeffrey Jacobs

Allocating and Managing Water for a Sustainable Future: Lessons from Around the World (Summer Conference, June 11-14)

7 pages.

Contains references (page 7).

The Okavango River Basin In Southern Africa: A Case Study Of Transboundary Resource Management Issues, Robert K. Hitchcock

Allocating and Managing Water for a Sustainable Future: Lessons from Around the World (Summer Conference, June 11-14)

21 pages.

Contains references (pages 18-21).

Transboundary Water Conflicts And Cooperation, Aaron T. Wolf

Allocating and Managing Water for a Sustainable Future: Lessons from Around the World (Summer Conference, June 11-14)

14 pages.

Contains references (page 13) and endnotes (page 14).

Protecting Environmental Values In Water Resources In Australia And A Note On Indigenous Rights To Water In Australia, David Farrier

Allocating and Managing Water for a Sustainable Future: Lessons from Around the World (Summer Conference, June 11-14)

58 pages.

Contains footnotes.

Reflections On Integrating Sustainability And Equity From My Journeys Along Rivers Across Four Continents, Deborah Moore

Allocating and Managing Water for a Sustainable Future: Lessons from Around the World (Summer Conference, June 11-14)

8 pages (includes color illustration).

Contains footnotes.

Managing Water Resources For A Sustainable Future: Law, Policy And Methodology Of China, Xi Wang, Xiaobo Zhang, Wenkai Li, Dejin Gu, Yanfang Zhou

Allocating and Managing Water for a Sustainable Future: Lessons from Around the World (Summer Conference, June 11-14)

37 pages (includes color illustrations).

Contains references (pages 36-37).