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#watermanagement — Public Fediverse posts

Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #watermanagement, aggregated by home.social.

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  1. This is a very long shot (and has nothing to do with history & co :sadness: ), but does anyone know of a database/book/compehensive list, or someone who might know one, about crop responses to deficit irrigation?

    Also: accessible without academic affiliation.

    (sorry for the length of the hashtags)

    #help #horticulture #agriculture #sustainability #science #irrigation #aridagriculture #crops #plants #agronomy #drought #environment #botany #watermanagement #water #rhizosphere

  2. Identifying Agricultural Consumptive-Use Patterns To Support Adaptive Water Management In California’s Santa Clara Valley Via Remote Sensing And Machine Learning
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    doi.org/10.1371/journal.pwat.0 <-- shared paper
    --
    H/T @Guillaume Wright | Executive Editor, PLOS
    “💧 With drought [and high temperatures] gripping many areas of the world right now... [the H/T] wanted to highlight a new paper in PLOS Water this week with a very timely focus on hydroclimatic stresses and what can be done to mitigate this through water management practices when it comes to agriculture.
    [The authors] investigate[d] adaptive water management practices in California’s Santa Clara Valley via remote sensing and machine learning techniques. They [found] good evidence for use of customized agricultural water-management plans for irrigation monitoring, conservation planning, and adaptive water management in groundwater-dependent regions such as is found in California…”
    #GIS #spatial #mapping #California #SantaClara #SantaClaraValley #custom #watermanagement #practices #waterresources #agriculture #remotesensing #spatialanalysis #machinelearning #earthobservation #AI #planning #wateruse #efficiency #water #hydrology #irrigation #conservation #adaptivewatermanagement #model #modeling #drought #extremeweather #hydroclimate #stress #crop #cropland #evapotranspiration #ET #NDVI #PRISM #precipitation #rainfall #watermanagementplan #groundwater

  3. Impact Of Reservoir Storage On Propagation From Meteorological To Hydrological Drought
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    doi.org/10.1016/j.jhydrol.2026 <-- shared paper
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    H/T @DrAjayGupta | Post Doctoral Fellow, IIT Bombay | Ph.D. in Hydrology, IIT Roorkee | Commonwealth Split-site Fellow, University of Birmingham I M.Tech in Water Resources Engineering, NIT Silchar | B.E. in Civil Engineering, PCE Nagpur.
    “🌍 Why is this important?
    While reservoirs are widely recognized for mitigating drought impacts, their role in controlling how drought propagates through the hydrological cycle has remained largely unexplored. In this study, [the authors] investigate how reservoir storage influences the transition of drought from meteorological to agricultural to reservoir to streamflow drought across the semi-arid Krishna River Basin, India.
    🔍 THIS STUDY ADDRESSES TWO KEY RESEARCH QUESTIONS:
    ✅ How do drought propagation time (initiation, peak, and termination) change from meteorological to agricultural, reservoir, and streamflow droughts across different timescales and threshold values?
    ✅ How does reservoir storage influence drought propagation between upstream and downstream reservoirs using the Downstreamness concept?
    📌 KEY FINDINGS
    🔹 Drought propagation differs substantially across drought types because each component of the hydrological system responds at different rates.
    🔹 Reservoirs significantly delay the propagation of drought by buffering water deficits, particularly between agricultural and streamflow drought.
    🔹 Mild and moderate upstream reservoir droughts rarely propagate downstream, whereas severe upstream droughts consistently transmit downstream, leading to longer duration, greater severity, and delayed onset.
    🔹 The downstreamness analysis reveals dynamic shifts in water storage between upstream and downstream reservoirs throughout drought development and recovery, providing valuable insights for reservoir operation and basin-scale drought management…”
    --
    “HIGHLIGHTS
    • Reservoir storage impact on drought propagation from meteorological-to-hydrological drought.
    • Drought propagation timeframe: initiation, peak and termination are checked.
    • Impact assessment using hydrological connection: upstream to downstream reservoirs.
    • Severe upstream droughts propagate downstream with increased duration and severity.
    • During drought periods water-storage concentration shifts from downstream to upstream..."
    #Drought #DroughtPropagation #Reservoirs #WaterResources #WaterManagement #RiverBasinManagement #KrishnaRiverBasin #Downstreamness #India #climatechange #reservoir #storage #hydrology #water #hydrologiccycle #watersecurity #planning #policy #KrishnaRiver #weather #climate #metrology #agriculture #farming #streamflow #model #modeling #spatiotemporal #spatialanalysis

  4. New Hampshire Bulletin: You can look up flood maps and school ratings. Why not the pipes under your street? . “Culvert [is] a free public map of buried water infrastructure drawn from federal, state, and municipal records. Let me be just as clear about what it is not. It does not test your water or tell you whether it’s safe to drink. Only a certified lab can do that…. Right now it covers […]

    https://rbfirehose.com/2026/07/23/new-hampshire-bulletin-you-can-look-up-flood-maps-and-school-ratings-why-not-the-pipes-under-your-street/
  5. Global Performance of #RemoteSensing Based and Reanalysis-Driven Models to Estimate Open Water Evaporation
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    doi.org/10.1029/2025WR042363
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    “ABSTRACT: Evaporation plays an essential role in the water cycle, influencing local and regional climates while directly impacting water availability in lakes. However, directly measuring evaporation over water bodies remains challenging due to the high costs of installing and maintaining the required in situ instrumentation. Although several remote sensing algorithms have been providing evaporation estimates, the lack of a global validation hinders our understanding of their relative uncertainties and performances across different regions. Here, [they] analyze[d] the performance of a suite of models that leverage satellite data and meteorological reanalysis to estimate evaporation over lakes worldwide. [They] compare[d] three remote sensing-based models, one reanalysis-driven model and one ensemble approach, using in situ observations from 27 lakes representing a diverse range of geographic and climatic regions. [Their] results demonstrate that, overall, the ensemble outperformed any individual model in terms of accuracy, with a RMSE and a bias of 1.3 and 0.3 mm/day, respectively. These findings highlight the benefits of using an ensemble approach to estimate open water evaporation with satellite-based models at the global scale, leveraging the unique strengths of each model. For the individual models, differences in the representation of heat storage changes and advection effects led to lower values of RMSE and bias, depending on the location and depth of the lakes. This study sets the path for future improvement of open water evaporation algorithms globally, while remote sensing techniques are proven satisfactory to monitoring of water loss in lakes globally, an essential step toward effective large-scale water resources management.
    PLAIN LANGUAGE SUMMARY: Water loss through evaporation in lakes and reservoirs directly affects water availability, which highlights the need to monitor these losses. However, measuring evaporation in situ is challenging and expensive. An alternative is to estimate evaporation using remote-sensing models and compare these estimates with in-situ data to verify their accuracy. Here, [they] evaluated four models and their ensemble (the models' mean value) using measurements from 27 lakes and reservoirs worldwide. [They] found that the ensemble presented higher accuracy and consistency than any individual model because it benefits from the strengths of each model. This approach can guide future improvements in estimating open-water evaporation, which is essential for large-scale water-resource management…”
    #global #mapping #earthobservation #GIS #spatial #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #model #modeling #water #hydrology #surfacewater #waterbody #lake #reservoir #evaporation #evapotranspiration #watercycle #weather #meteorology #usecase #waterresources #watermanagement #waterloss #regional #estimate #policy #planning #instrumentation #comparasion

  6. Drought emergency: Water trucks deployed in Veneto, Lombardy, Piedmont, and Marche

    Due to severe drought conditions, water trucks are being used to supply potable water in several regions of northern and central Italy, highlighting the impact of climate challenges on public services and water management.

    #EU #Italy #WaterManagement #ClimateChange #PublicServices

    ilsole24ore.com/art/siccita-po

  7. Ancient Water Wisdom - The Acequias Of Sierra Nevada, Europe’s Oldest Groundwater System ⛰️
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    memolaproject.eu/sierra-nevada <-- shared link to the 𝗠𝗘𝗠𝗢𝗟𝗔 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗷𝗲𝗰𝘁 page
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    regadiohistorico.es/ <-- shared technical page, “Collaborative map of historical irrigation systems in Granada and Almería” / “Mapa colaborativo de regadíos históricos de Granada y Almería”
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    youtu.be/-TIUI2KflMk?si=iaSOwV <-- shared video overview, “Participa al Mapa colaborativo de regadíos históricos de Granada y Almería”
    --
    H/T @sofie de Volder | Co-founder TRAQUA
    “[The author has] already discussed ancient water management systems, such as the qanats in Persia and other Eastern countries. In Europe, there are the acequias of the Sierra Nevada in Andalusia, Spain.
    The hand-dug channels date back over 1,000 years to the Moorish era. Networks of canals, aqueducts and cisterns were engineered to capture and transport snowmelt, turning this natural resource into a sustainable water supply for agriculture. The high-altitude ditches had openings, allowing water to infiltrate into fractures and faults, replenishing the aquifer, and to irrigate the lower levels of the slopes.
    𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗮𝘀?
    ✅ Gravity-fed irrigation that supported terraced farms and local biodiversity.
    ✅ Designed to distribute water slowly and equitably, even during dry summers.
    ✅ Stretching over thousands of kilometres, these systems fell into disuse in the 1980s but are now part of restoration efforts led by the MEMOLA Project (Universidad de Granada).
    With climate change and more intense droughts, the Acequias could provide an ancient solution to the modern-day water crisis…”
    #Spain #𝗮𝗰𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗶𝗮𝘀 #waterresources #historic #irrigation #mapping #watermanagement #agriculture #farming #watersecurity #HistoricalIrrigationSystems #agroecological #SierraNevada #Andalusia #Moors #engineering #constructed #channels #canals #aqueducts #cisterns #water #hydrography #snowmelt #naturalresource #sustainability #groundwater #aquifers #recharge #MEMOLA #mapping #climatechange #extremeweather #drought

  8. GMIA-NEXT - Next-Generation Global Map of Irrigated Areas |
    --
    doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-10085 <-- shared paper
    --
    zenodo.org/records/17627111 <-- shared open data
    --
    H/T @kyle Davis
    “Irrigation plays a critical role in global food production and climate adaptation and exercises profound influence over humanity's water use. Yet despite its critical importance, there is a persistent lack of understanding of fine-scale irrigation patterns across the planet, knowledge which is essential for informing global food security and sustainability targets. Utilizing either statistical downscaling or remote sensing approaches, existing global irrigation datasets are constrained by coarse spatial resolutions, a lack of timeliness, or varying robustness and reliability. To address this gap, here [they] integrate[d] multi-source Earth observation and environmental datasets and use[d] machine learning to develop a medium-resolution (30 metre) global irrigated area dataset for the 2023/24 growing season. Within existing cropland extent, we leverage a newly compiled set of georeferenced irrigated (N=230,683) and non-irrigated (N=153,194) ground-truth points and integrate seasonal vegetation metrics derived from Landsat 8/9 imagery with agroecological-zone information and hydroclimatic and topographic variables. [They] subsequently develop and evaluate two machine-learning frameworks, a continental Agro-Ecological Zone (AEZ) tile-based framework and a continental-scale framework, and apply the best-performing approach for each continent. Evaluation using held-out test samples yielded a global accuracy of 80.5 ± 2.1%. The resulting maps were also validated against independent global and national irrigation datasets and statistics, demonstrating broad agreement in the spatial distribution of irrigated areas. This approach is robust and reliable because it is built on a harmonized global ground-truth database, incorporates multiple predictors, and is rigorously validated using independent datasets. All code, ground-truth, and data products are freely and publicly available [link above] and can serve as a robust, scale-neutral, and fully reproducible framework for fine-resolution irrigation mapping. These advances provide the critical and long-needed foundation for near-real-time monitoring and early warning systems, and fine-scale land and water resource management…”
    #IrrigatedAreas #Mapping #GIS #spatial #mapping #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #global #irrigation #water #hydrology #hydrography #waterresources #farming #agriculture #opendata #remotesensing #earthobservation #geomorphometry #AI #machinelearning #LLM #model #modeling #WaterManagement #opendata #AgroEcologicalZone #AEZ #cropland #irrigatedareas #foodproduction #wateruse #humanimpacts #EarthObservation #remotesensing #earlywarning #monitoring #FoodandAgricultureOrganizationFAO #FAO
    @FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization

  9. Eager Beavers - Rodents Engineer Czech Wetland Project After Years Of Human Delay [ecosystem engineers]
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    theguardian.com/world/2025/feb <-- shared technical media article
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    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaver-e <-- shared wiki technical page
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    phys.org/news/2025-02-fine-bea <-- shared technical article
    --
    youtu.be/GSTw8qmBP4Y?si=XK2Iy2 <-- shared video (Czech)
    --
    H/T @ScienceGirl
    "We don't expect any conflict with the beaver in the next 10 years," ~ Bohumil Fiser from the Czech Nature Conservation Agency
    --
    “For seven years, planners struggled to complete a $1.2 million wetland restoration project in the Brdy region of the Czech Republic. The goal was to build a dam that would improve water management and bring back valuable wetland habitat, but the project remained trapped in a maze of permits and approvals.
    Then a family of eight Eurasian beavers did what engineers had planned… without permits, machinery, or a budget.
    The beavers built a network of dams in almost the exact area chosen for the proposed project, naturally restoring the wetland system officials had spent years trying to create. After seeing the results, authorities decided there was little point continuing with the original human-built dam.
    Although some reports suggested the beavers completed the work overnight, experts say their construction likely took several weeks. The reason it seemed sudden is that the animals quietly worked away until their finished dams became impossible to miss.
    Beavers are known as “ecosystem engineers” because their behaviour can reshape entire environments. By cutting trees and blocking streams, they create ponds and wetlands that support countless species, including fish, amphibians, insects, birds, and mammals.
    Their wetlands also act as natural water reservoirs, helping during droughts, reducing flood risks, filtering water, storing carbon, and keeping landscapes wetter during wildfires…
    Once heavily hunted across Europe, beaver populations have been recovering thanks to conservation efforts, proving that sometimes nature can solve problems humans spend years trying to fix…"
    #water #hydrology #KlabavaRiver #Czech #BrdyRegion #protected #CzechRepublic #armytraining #military #beaver #Eurasianbeavers #dam #beaverdam #waterquality #restoration #biodiversity #crayfish #wetland #ecology #benefits #Beavers #NatureBasedSolutions #Wetlands #Ecology #Biodiversity #Agroforestry #EnvironmentalScience #Conservation #Wildlife #Ecosystem #bioviversity #conservation #restoration #landscaperecovery #EcosystemEngineers #nature #floodmanagement #FloodMitigation #flood #flooding #energy #floodrisk #sustainability #wetlands #hydrography #dams #impoundment #deadwood #waterresources #landscapeengineer #agriculture #benefits #vegetation #ecology #ecosystem #riversystemsstabilisation #naturalwaterregulation #resilience #drought #wildfire #valleysreborn #slowdetermination #fisheries #invertebrates #extremeweather #floodflows #sediment #baseflow #drought #landmanagement #naturalsystems #landuse #ecosystemengineers #watermanagement

  10. Watching A #NOAA #Webinar on Flash Droughts
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    noaaresearch.webex.com/wbxmjs/ <-- shared NOAA Summer Science Series individual webinar
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    drought.gov/what-is-drought/fl <-- shared NOAA overview technical article
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    star.nesdis.noaa.gov/star/NOAA <-- subscribe to the NOAA Summer Science Series
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    doi.org/10.1038/s41612-024-006 <-- shared paper
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    communities.springernature.com <-- shared technical article (derived from paper above)
    H/T @Jeffrey Basara PhD, MBA | Chair and Professor - Department of Environmental, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Massachusetts Lowell | Co-Founder - American Prime Sustainable Solutions
    [Flash floods? not TOO hard to conceptualise.
    Flash drought? harder to 'get my head around', but H/T / presenter does an excellent job!]
    "Not all droughts are the same. In some cases, drought rapidly intensifies at subseasonal to seasonal scales with significant impacts to agriculture and water resources along with the increased propensity for heatwaves and wildfires. Like all droughts, flash drought begins with a precipitation deficit. However, both evaporative demand and soil moisture are critical flash drought variables, and identifying and monitoring the desiccation of the terrestrial surface is key for determining flash drought development and associated impacts. While recent advances in knowledge and monitoring of flash drought have occurred, fundamental questions remain in the state of the science. What are the overall mechanistic relationships between atmospheric demand, evaporative stress, terrestrial desiccation, and precipitation that drive the progression of flash drought? Do regional characteristics of the environment impact the evolution of flash drought? What are the scales of predictability for flash drought? Finally, how will flash drought frequency and intensity evolve in a changing climate system"
    --
    "Flash drought intensifies rapidly due to changes in precipitation, temperature, wind, and radiation. These changes in the weather increase evapotranspiration and lower soil moisture. Flash droughts can cause extensive damage to agriculture, economies, and ecosystems if they are not predicted and discovered early..."
    #water #hydrology #fedscience #publicgood #hydrologicdrought #waterdeficit #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #watersecurity #risk #hazard #humanimpacts #streamflow #riverflow #groundwater #surfacewater #climate #weather #climatechange #extremeweather #atmosphere #metrology #regional #global #farming #agriculture #fluvial #pluvial #rainfall #precipitation #cloudcover #energy #heat #temperature #ET #evapotranspiration #farming #agriculture #foodsecurity #waterresources #dynamicsystems #watermanagement #flashdrought #drought #susceptibility #monitoring #prediction #model #modeling
    @noaa

  11. National Water Availability Assessment Data Companion Launches Interactive Map
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    water.usgs.gov/nwaa-data/ <-- shared USGS resource link
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    water.usgs.gov/nwaa-data/inter <-- shared USGS webmap
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    H/T @USGS NWDC
    “The National Water Availability Assessment Data Companion (NWDC) delivers national-scale modeled water data underlying the National Water Availability Assessment Report. The NWDC will be continuously updated to include new data used in future National Water Availability Assessment Reports, with planned reports in 2026 and 2030.
    The NWDC also serves information on underlying model methodologies, strengths, and limitations to enable proper use of the data…
    USGS scientific teams develop NWDC models to analyze and represent the complexities of water systems. These models fill gaps where USGS observations are unavailable, covering the conterminous United States (lower 48 states) and soon extending to Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico.
    All NWDC datasets currently cover past conditions over multiple decades, and are standardized to 12-digit [WBD] hydrologic unit code (HUC12) watersheds and monthly timesteps…”
    #opendata #monitoring #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal #fedscience #publicgood #water #hydrology #waterresources #watermanagement #change #model #modeling #USA #NationalWaterAvailabilityAssessment #NWDC #CONUS #USGS #USGS_water
    @USGS

  12. Comparing Multi-Model Mosaic And Multi-Model Combination Methods To Simulate Streamflow Across The Contiguous USA
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    doi.org/10.5194/hess-30-3945-2 <-- shared paper
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    H/T @cyril THEBAULT | Postdoctoral Fellow chez Earth Sciences New Zealand
    “[They] compared different multi-model approaches for streamflow simulation using 78 hydrological models across 559 catchments in the United States. [Their] results show that while multi-model combinations can slightly improve accuracy and reduce uncertainty, no single approach performs best everywhere.
    One interesting takeaway is that a carefully selected single model can perform as well as more complex multi-model approaches when it is chosen based on a comparative evaluation rather than simply inherited from legacy operational systems... 👀”
    --
    “The ability to accurately predict streamflow underpins decisions in water management, flood prevention, and sectoral planning. Traditional approaches for streamflow prediction often rely on a single model, thereby overlooking potential benefits from using multiple models. To address this limitation, this study explores alternative methods that select and combine multiple models to enhance streamflow simulations. Specifically, [they] assess[ed] the performance of multi-model mosaic methods that assign a single model to each catchment, and multi-model combination methods that merge multiple models using static or dynamic weighting schemes. The Framework for Understanding Structural Errors (FUSE) is used to create an ensemble of 78 hydrological models, which were applied to 544 catchments from the CAMELS dataset across the contiguous United States. Each of the 78 models is calibrated utilizing a composite objective function, calculated as the average of a high-flow and a low-flow performance metric, to cover a wide range of streamflow conditions. Based on [their] selection of lumped FUSE models, the results show that a carefully chosen single model from a larger ensemble can closely approach the performance of more complex multi-model strategies. Among the multi-model approaches, the combination and mosaic methods show broadly similar overall skill, although the combination approaches deliver slightly higher performance and lower sampling uncertainty. However, per-catchment differences persist, indicating that no single multi-model strategy dominates everywhere. This heterogeneity in performance makes it difficult to determine a priori which multi-model method will best represent streamflow in a given catchment…”
    #water #hydrology #streamflow #USA #CONUS #multimodel #simulation #hydrologic #model #modeling #catchments #watermanagement #waterresources #planning #watersecurity #flood #flooding #prediction #FUSE #CAMELS #spatialanalysis #spatiotemporal