Molinos hidráulicos harineros en Coquimbo (Chile, 1544-1750)

This paper examines the process by which the Corregimiento de Coquimbo become the main mill pole of Chile, when this kingdom was the largest wheat producer in South America. The evolution of hydraulic mills in this township from the foundation of La Serena (1544) to the middle of the 18th century is studied from original documents of the National Archive, especially Royal Audience and Notaries of La Serena. The importance of the legacy of indigenous peoples in the construction of irrigation canal networks for agriculture is detected. On this basis, the Spanish colonizers had advantages to install the European hydraulic mill culture. The role of specialized artisans, both indigenous and Afro-descendant and Spanish-Creole, is identified. It is detected that the mills operated as poles of consolidation of markets and benchmarks for the configuration of regional trade routes.

Indus Waters

In this chapter, I wish to offer a pre-history to the Indus Water Treaty of 1960. Since the period that this book covers ends at 1952, and since I wish to situate the discussions around the treaty as a means of implementing the partition, it becomes particularly important to understand the considerations that affected the early stages of the Indus negotiations. I argue that although the Indus Waters Treaty, negotiated under the auspices of the World Bank, was signed only in 1960, over a decade after the partition, many of its clauses had built upon the assumptions that had been formed by 1950. Indeed, by 1951, both the source of the problem—the fear that enough water would not be allowed to flow in to Pakistan from the canals that had been built before the partition—as well as its solution—that new canal networks would have to be developed in a way that would satisfy the separate requirements of both India and Pakistan—were already apparent. The discussions around Indus waters in the years that immediately followed the partition, offer valuable insights into how the implementation of the partition was conceptualized.

Climate Change-Land Degradation-Food Security Nexus: Addressing India’s Challenge

Monsoon rains provide relief from the sweltering summer heat conditions, replenish depleted profile moisture to breathe new life in soils. With appropriate management of rain water, Indian summer monsoons boost the level of ‘reservoir of life’. Our inability to manage spatial and temporal rainfall variation features of deficit and excess rainfall episodes and their interactions with soil variability is a major cause of uncertainty in agricultural production. In the past, entire focus of national efforts was on rainwater harvesting, storage and distribution through canal networks and greater reliance on ground water pumping to meet immediate crop water demands. These approaches have resulted in wide spread problems of natural resource fatigue and unsustainable water supplies. This paper analyses the complexities of climate change-land degradation-food security nexus and suggests the need for adopting alternate approaches emphasising on in situ conservation of rain water and its efficient use such as to reverse the processes that contribute to land degradation in specific landscapes.

Origins of functional connectivity in a human-modified wetland landscape

Spatial heterogeneity in habitat conditions within a landscape should influence degree of movement of species between natural and artificial environments. For wetland landscapes, this functional connectivity was predicted to emerge from the influence of spatiotemporal patterns of depth on permeability of habitat edges and distance and directedness of cross-habitat dispersal. We quantified how connectivity between canals and marshes of the Florida Everglades varies with species and landscape patterns bordering canals by using radio telemetry to measure movement of a native (Florida largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides floridanus) and a nonnative species (Mayan cichlid, Cichlasoma urophthalmus) common to canals. Both species moved similar distances inside canal networks, but Mayan cichlids dispersed outside of canals more frequently, at shallower conditions, and over greater distances than Florida largemouth bass. As topographic relief increased in marshes bordering canals, dispersal between these habitats decreased in distance and became more directed, with Florida largemouth bass sensitive to depth variability at a smaller spatial scale than Mayan cichlids. The way fish traits interact with submerged landscape structure to influence connectivity can serve as a basis for predicting potential impacts of artificial habitats that arise from dispersal outside their borders.