Economics and Water Resources Planning in America

1979 ◽  
Vol 105 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-64
Author(s):  
L. Douglas James ◽  
Jerry R. Rogers
1985 ◽  
Vol 17 (6-7) ◽  
pp. 879-890 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin E. Herricks

With increased emphasis on environmental quality objectives in water resources planning and management, past practices of simply considering water quality as the only environmental quality objective are inappropriate. Expanded environmental quality objectives include maintenance of high quality aquatic habitat. Water resource systems must provide both physical and chemical conditions appropriate for the propagation and maintenance of healthy diverse aquatic communities. Managing water resources to provide high quality habitat involves planning to meet both water quality and water quantity objectives. Existing technology based water quality controls and stream based water quality criteria can now be supplemented by aquatic habitat management. An approach to aquatic habitat management is illustrated by use of the Incremental Methodology developed by the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The Incremental Methodology uses measures of aquatic habitat to assess instream flows required for by aquatic life. Thus the range of environmental quality objectives in resources planning and management is expanded by application of these methods to include aquatic habitat as well as water quality management. Methods used to determine instream flow needs for rivers in Illinois are reviewed, and the use of this information in developing regulations limiting water extraction for off stream use are described. Aquatic habitat based management is shown to provide workable methods to meet expanded environmental quality objectives in water resources planning and management.


Water ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 1247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sikhululekile Ncube ◽  
Annie Visser ◽  
Lindsay Beevers

River systems provide diverse ecosystem services (ES), such as flood regulation (regulating), fresh water (provisioning), nutrient cycling (supporting), and recreation (cultural), among others. The construction of infrastructure (e.g., for hydropower, irrigation) enhances the delivery of tangible ES for example food or energy (generally provisioning) to meet human needs. However, the resulting change to river flows threatens both the ecological health of a river and its ability to provide intangible but vital ES, for example those which support the delivery of other services. Understanding these supporting ES processes in river systems is essential to fully recognise the impact of water resources development on ES delivery. Whilst approaches for assessing instream supporting ES are under development, to date few provide quantitative methods for assessing delivery. Thus, this paper sets out a framework for the assessment of instream supporting ES using hydroecological modelling. It links supporting ES delivery to fluvial hydrological indicators through the use of ecologically relevant hydrological indices and macroinvertebrate flow preferences. The proposed framework is demonstrated on the Beas River basin (Western Himalayas, India), and is flexible enough to be transferred to a basin-wide model, thereby allowing ES relationships to be accounted for in basin-wide water resources planning.


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