1,720,974 research outputs found
MADFORWATER. WP5 Strategies and economic instruments for basin-scale water resources management. Treated Wastewater reuse on Citrus in Morocco. Assessing the Economic Feasibility of irrigation and nutrient management strategies
No full textReuse of treated wastewater (TWW) for irrigation can be an effective strategy in Mediterranean countries to overcome the pressure on freshwater resources if its economic viability is demonstrated. In this work, the assessment of the economic feasibility of irrigation and nutrient management with TWW reuse was carried out in the citrus sector in the Souss Massa region, in Morocco. Considering the effects of TWW reuse on yields, water and fertilizer requirements, a mathematical non-linear optimization model was used to identify the optimal allocation of land and of non-uniform quality irrigation water and to assess the impacts on the economic performance of the citrus sector. Different water price and irrigation technology scenarios have been simulated. Overall results indicated that the re-use of TWW - with a current price higher than the conventional resource - must be subsidized to be proposed as a convenient alternative for irrigation. A reduction in the TWW price from its current level (0.23 Euro / m3) to a level equal to that of fresh water (0.15 Euro / m3) would encourage farmers to use TWW on 59% of the total cultivated area, leading to a 350 mm reduction in quantity of used fresh water per hectare
MADFORWATER. Decision Support Tool for wastewater management and for water & land management in agriculture
Full text linkHere are provided the user guide and the code for a Decision Support Tool (DST) relative to wastewater management and water & land management in agriculture, developed in the MADFORWATER project. The DST is an integrated agro-economic model developed in Tasks 3.3 and 5.3, aimed at integrating water reuse and irrigation technologies with economic instruments into basin-scale strategies to enhance the use of treated wastewater.
The hydro-agro-economic DST consists of statements that define the data first, followed by the model and the solution statements. The DST is contained in a computer code constructed with the text editor GAMS IDE. The file has the file extension .gsm and can be read using any text editor. To run the DST, it is necessary to install the GAMS IDE software. The code has been written in order to be usable also with the demo license of GAMS, that can be freely obtained at the following link: https://www.gams.com/download/. At the same link, it is possible to freely download the GAMS software, for Windows, Linux or MAC operating systems.
An extremely wide documentation on the use of GAMS, including a relevant library of GAMS codes, is available at this link: https://www.gams.com/31/docs/
Pricing unmetered irrigation water under asymmetric information and full cost recovery
Full text linkThe objective of this study is to define an efficient pricing scheme for irrigation water in conditions of unmetered water use. The study is based on a principal-agent model and identifies a menu of contracts, defined as a set of payments and share of irrigated area, able to provide incentives for an efficient use of the resource by maximizing social welfare. The model is applied in the case study of the çukas region (Albania) where irrigation water is not metered. The results demonstrate that using a menu of contracts makes it possible to define a second best solution that may improve the overall social welfare derived from irrigation water use compared with the existing pricing structure, though, in the specific case study, the improvement is small. Furthermore, the results also suggest that irrigation water pricing policy needs to take into account different farm types, and that appropriate contract-type pricing schemes have a potential role in providing incentives to farmers to make irrigation choices to the social optimum
Economic analysis of the long-term effects of groundwater salinity: bringing the farmer’s perspectives into policy
No full textThis research estimates the economic losses at the farm level caused by groundwater over-exploitation and by seawater intrusion. The problem of coastal groundwater salinity was tackled by considering its hydrological, agronomic and economic aspects. Economic analysis for competitive use vs. regulated management regimes was carried out, considering constant and adaptive watering techniques. We concentrate on the farmers’ perspective of water as an input in agriculture, and assess discounted net present value over a period of 30 years. The ultimate goal of this research is to raise the awareness of farmers and policy makers by demonstrating the economic impacts (from the farmer’s point of view) of over-exploitation. Our findings for Apulia Region (Southern Italy) indicate that the slowness of the long-term effect of salinity and the ability of farmers to adapt irrigation profiles suggest broadening the perspective of policy intervention. For an effective management of this common resource, policy makers should follow a more comprehensive approach based on economic analysis
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
MADFORWATER. WP3 Adaptation of technologies for efficient water management and treated wastewater reuse in agriculture. Task3.3 Integrated physical and economic model for land and water use optimization. Tunisian, Egyptian and Moroccan basins
No full textThis dataset includes MADFORWATER Task 3.3 data, that were used for the development, application and calibration of an integrated agro-economic model with hydrology and water parameters for optimizing farm income, cropping pattern and water allocation in the three case studies area of MADFORWATER project. The case study areas are: the irrigated farming system in the Kafr-El-Sheikh Region (Egypt), the citrus farming system in Souss-Mass region (Morocco), and the annual and permanent irrigated farming in the Nabeul Governorate (Tunisia).
In particular, the dataset includes data on: cultivated and irrigated surface cropping patterns, irrigation requirements and schedules, water availability and water consumption, crop characteristics (yields, prices and production costs), economic performance (farm income, labor use, etc.), performance indicator of irrigation technologies.
The data scale is referred to the 3 selected basins, where the integrated technologies and strategies were tested and implemented.
The integrated model validated and tested was used in other MADFORWATER tasks, such as those developed in WP5, to develop water & land management strategies for an optimal exploitation of the irrigation technologies developed WP3, and for the assessment of the impact of economic instruments for improving irrigation efficiency and for enhancing wastewater reuse in agriculture.
Potential users for this dataset include: (i) policy-makers or other decision-makers involved in water management and planning or agricultural policy development; (ii) researchers and companies active in the fields of treated wastewater (TWW) reuse, water resources management, irrigation and agricultural and natural resource economics
- …
