The development of groundwater research in the past 40 years: A burgeoning trend in groundwater depletion and sustainable management

2020 ◽  
Vol 587 ◽  
pp. 125006 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiyue Jia ◽  
Deyi Hou ◽  
Liuwei Wang ◽  
David O'Connor ◽  
Jian Luo
Author(s):  
Johan Larsson ◽  
Lisa Larsson

The need to consider sustainability has substantially increased the complexity of implementing construction and infrastructure projects and new management practices have emerged during the past decade to tackle the global sustainability challenges, where the engagement and coordination of broader competences from stakeholders throughout the supply chain is required. This new project management paradigm has been accompanied by greater attention to the concept of collaborative business arrangements, often called partnering, that has emerged in construction and infrastructure projects to improve project deliveries. However, there are uncertainties about the optimal strategy to foster, integrate and maintain the required collaboration, particularly in sustainable management practices in infrastructure maintenance projects. This paper addresses these uncertainties, based on a single case study of an infrastructure maintenance contract involving an extensive collaborative business arrangement. The findings reveal that different collaborative practices affect diverse aspects of sustainable project management. Further, the extensive collaborative business arrangement has promoted sustainable deliveries based upon organizational learning and continuous improvements. Thus, this study offers an encouraging example of how extensive collaboration can be fostered and play a key role in sustainable project management practices.


2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-133
Author(s):  
Woo Jun

By using a new conceptual model of ‘Smile Curve’, this research strives to examine how Cheil Industries Inc. (CI) has been transforming its value chain to create its competitive advantage. According to the results, CI’s value-added structure in the past (conventional industrialization economy) was heavily reliant on the manufacturing sector, and therefore, the profit graph shaped an ‘Upside-down Shape of U’ indicating that production and manufacturing are the most value-added fields. However, CI’s current (knowledge-based economy) graph shows a ‘U with Fluent Curve’ indicating that R&D, human resources, corporate culture, firm infrastructure, manufacturing, logistics and marketing are simultaneously creating value-added for the company. This implies that CI’s value-added source is more diversified to fit with knowledge-based economy.


Agronomy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (12) ◽  
pp. 2548
Author(s):  
Tsz Him Lo ◽  
H. C. (Lyle) Pringle

The Yazoo–Mississippi Delta is one of the regions within the Lower Mississippi River Basin where substantial irrigation development and consequent groundwater depletion have occurred over the past three decades. To describe this irrigation development, a study was conducted to analyze existing geospatial datasets and to synthesize the results with those of past government surveys. The effort produced a quantitative review characterizing three aspects of irrigation development from 1991 to 2020. First, the expansion of irrigated area was tracked in terms of absolute area and in terms of fraction relative to total land or cropland area. Second, trends in irrigated land cover were traced in terms of irrigated crop mix, irrigated fractions of main crops, and comparisons with non-irrigated land. Third, changes in irrigation systems were examined in terms of water sources, energy sources, and application methods. Original findings of this study for the end of 2020 included moderate positive spatial autocorrelation in the density of irrigated areas; a higher irrigated crop preference for soybean and rice over cotton and corn in highly hydric soils; and 91% and 3% of permitted areas studied being respectively under groundwater withdrawal permits exclusively and under surface water diversion permits exclusively. By compiling such information, this paper can serve as a convenient reference on the recent history and status of irrigation development in the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta.


Author(s):  
G. P. Sunandini ◽  
K. Solmon Raju Paul ◽  
Shakuntala Devi Irugu

The study has been taken up with the objective of investigating the trends, pattern of growth and the extent of instability in area, production and productivity of rice crop in Andhra Pradesh state over a period of five and half decades from 1959-60 to 2013-14. Compound Growth Rate and Coefficient of Variation were used to calculate the annual growth rate and instability. The area, production and productivity of rice in this period has increased by 25, 201 and 138 per cent respectively. In this period, the districts were categorised and grouped under different groups based on average productivity of rice. During the study period many of the districts moved from very low productivity to high productivity group. During 1960s, 17 districts are under very low productivity group (<1500 kg/ha) and in 2010s 13 districts are under high productivity group (>3000 kg/ha). During the period 2014-19 in the divided Andhra Pradesh contribution of different productivity groups to the states paddy production was calculated and concluded that 3 districts under high productivity group (>6000kg/ha) contributed 52 per cent of the production. During 2010s annual growth rates for area, production and productivity are 4.08, 4.02 and 1.21 respectively. In all the periods in the past five and half decades, production and productivity growth rates are higher than growth rate in area except in 2010s. Instability was higher in production and area than in productivity.  The annual growth rate and the instability of production and area are higher in 2010s. Suitable crop planning is to be initiated, adoption of sustainable management practices are to be intensified to maintain the growth rate and reduce the instability in area and production.


Author(s):  
Remah Y. Gharib

The rise in the interest of urban conservation over the past years has led to search for a more effective decision-making and appropriate assessment. Conservation of historic centers in England aims to achieve important goals with social benefits and increasingly the improving urban qualities. Despite this positive consciousness, some conservation initiatives do not deliver their goals at the right time while others do not maintain their success for longer periods. This striking phenomenon is often due to the lack of sustainable management. The aim of this study is to explore the concept of sustainable management with particular focus on the conservation of historic centers and to introduce an assessment tool to measure the degree of success in conserving historic centers. The study focuses on two English case studies: Bath and Cambridge City Centers; investigating their visions, policies and strategies with relevance to the feedback of local communities and responsible authorities. The study utilizes the assessment tool to clarify the crucial need for an effective management framework based on the relationships of the factors of ‘importance’ and ‘performance.’


Author(s):  
Florian Krampe ◽  
Ashok Swain

For international and domestic actors, postconflict situations constitute one of the most difficult policy arenas to understand and operate within. In this context, the sustainable management of natural resources to prevent conflict and build peace—before, during, or after conflict—has received increasing scholarly attention over the past three decades. Emphasizing the potential for environmental cooperation to support peace and stability, researchers have focused on the ecological foundations for a socially, economically, and politically resilient peace. This chapter takes stock of the current state of the art on environmental peacebuilding, providing a summary of the most common definitions before looking back at the development of environmental peacebuilding along the two most noticeable perspectives and the remaining challenges and pathways for future research.


Land ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (10) ◽  
pp. 380
Author(s):  
Luis Diaz-Balteiro ◽  
Carlos Iglesias-Merchan ◽  
Carlos Romero ◽  
Silvestre García de Jalón

In recent years modern societies have attached a multifunctional requirement to the use of renewable resources, making their optimal sustainable management more complex. In the last decades, in many cases, this complexity is addressed by formulating management models with the help of the concepts and methods belonging to the well-known multicriteria decision-making (MCDM) paradigm. The purpose of this paper was to undertake a hermeneutic meta-analysis of the literature provided in primary journals on issues related to the management of these resources with the help of the MCDM paradigm. In this way, the paper aimed to obtain new, basic insights with considerations that might improve the efficiency of future research in the field studied. The meta-analysis was implemented by formulating and testing a battery of hypotheses of how the MCDM methods have been used in the past for the formulation of management models for the type of resource analyzed.


Forests ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 831
Author(s):  
Ainhoa Urkijo-Letona ◽  
Susana Cárcamo ◽  
Lorena Peña ◽  
Beatriz Fernández de Manuel ◽  
Miren Onaindia ◽  
...  

In the last decade, the population of the white-backed woodpecker (Dendrocopos leucotos lilfordi) (WBW) in Navarre has been reduced mainly due to the loss of suitable habitat for this species from intensive forest management, leading almost to its extinction. This study aimed to identify the key structural elements of breeding habitats of the WBW and analyze their effect on the composition of the saproxylic fungi community within the habitats. In the Special Area of Conservation, namely Quinto Real in Navarre, 20 circular plots (500 m2) and 10 transects (150–300 m) were located inside and outside WBW territories. Within each sample plot, forest structure, deadwood, microhabitats, regeneration, and saproxylic fungi community were studied. The results showed that the key elements in the WBW territories were high trees, high diversity of deadwood (with a high presence of big and late-decay deadwood), high snag volume, and high microhabitat diversity. Although the past management is also evident in the variability of some of those characteristics, this species is well adapted to different structural and compositional conditions of the territory. The saproxylic fungi community was richer among the WBW territories, and in those areas, the presence of Fomes fomentarius was high, compared to non-WBW territories where it was not present. In conclusion, to maintain and protect the studied population, it is necessary to implement sustainable management that guarantees the conservation of the key elements for the WBW territories (structural heterogeneity and high deadwood diversity) in order to increase the suitability of the habitat for WBWs.


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