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 Journal of Contemporary
Water Research & Education
Issue No. 142 August 2009
Geography:
A Vibrant Agenda for the Next 20 Years of Water Resources Research

Contents

Water Promises: Much Ado about Nothing - As Profitless as Water in a Sieve?

Graham A. Tobin.......................................................................................................................................................1

Articles

Future Hydroclimatology and the Research Challenges of a Post-Stationary World

Katherine K. Hirschboeck........................................................................................................................................4
Integrating Water-Quality into a Water Resources Research Agenda
L. Allan James.......................................................................................................................................................10
Integrated Ecohydrologic Research and Hydro-Informatics
D. Scott Mackay and Lawrence E. Band...............................................................................................................16
Applying Geographic Information Techniques to Study Water Resources
for the Next 20 Years
Luoheng Han........................................................................................................................................................25
Integration of Water Data for Decision-Making and Research
R. Rajagopal.........................................................................................................................................................28
Water for Agriculture: Global Change and Geographic Perspectives on
Research Challenges for the Future
John Harrington, Jr. ............................................................................................................................................36
Emerging Issues and Challenges: Natural Hazards
Burrell Montz......................................................................................................................................................42
Integrated Policy and Planning for Water and Energy
Young-Doo Wang................................................................................................................................................46
Ecological Economics and Water Resources Geography
Christopher Lant ................................................................................................................................................52
The Political Economy and Political Ecology of the Hydro-Social Cycle
Erik Swyngedouw...............................................................................................................................................56
Comparative International Water Research
James L. Wescoat, Jr. ........................................................................................................................................61
A Long Term View of Water and International Security
Aaron T. Wolf.....................................................................................................................................................67
Problem-Centered vs. Discipline-Centered Research for the Exploration of Sustainability
William James Smith, Jr. ....................................................................................................................................76
Geographic Research in Water Resources: A Vibrant Research Agenda for the Next 20 Years
William James Smith, Jr. ..........................................................................................................................................83
 Contents - Continued

UCOWR Board of Directors.......................................................................................................................89

UCOWR Member Institutions.....................................................................................................................90
Benefits of UCOWR Membership...............................................................................................................91
Friends of UCOWR and Warren A. Hall Medal Honorees......................................................................92
Past Issues of JCWRE/Water Resources Update....................................................................................93
 

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 1-3, August 2009

Water Promises: Much Ado about Nothing -

As Profitless as Water in a Sieve?1
Graham A. Tobin
Professor, Department of Geography, University of South Florida, Tampa

T
oday there is much ado about water – as
there always has been and always will be.
However, until we actually find ways to
apply scientifically-based, truly interdisciplinary
scholarship that embraces sound community
engagement, crucial knowledge about our most
valuable resource may continue to be “lost” or
at least ignored, much as water trickles through a
sieve. We need a comprehensive, inclusive approach
to solve the challenges of the water environment.
Of course this is not a new argument. Thousands
of books, articles, papers and technical reports
have been written describing water problems
from around the world, outlining fundamental
causes, and calling for changes in the way we
approach problem solving. Yet still we encounter
severe crises – shortages of water for drinking,
agriculture and industry, catastrophic floods,
contamination and pollution of water sources, and
outbreaks of water-related health issues such as
cholera, schistosomiasis, and typhoid. The sieve
that has made such endeavors profitless, it seems,
is a human one, a lack of will and commitment on
many different levels. For all intents and purposes,
we understand many of the issues involved; we
have “merely” failed to implement appropriate
solutions.
Even a cursory look at the literature on water
reveals a vast scholarship originating from diverse
disciplines and applying multiple methodologies.
The term “water wars” is used ubiquitously to
describe the challenges facing many societies
around the globe, from the corporate moves
towards water privatization and the recent climate
change issues in Bolivia, to the dam and reservoir
systems in India, to the controls over water supply
encountered in the Middle East and China. Indeed,
“water wars” elicits 585,000 hits on Google and
3,400 on Google Scholar. On Amazon.com there
are over 850 book citations to “water wars.” Clearly,
there is no shortage of scientists and academics
dedicating serious study to water conflicts. Other
terms reveal similar levels of Google hits: water
crisis (973,000), water solutions (736,000), water
sustainability (73,300), water quantity (477,000)
and water quality (15.4 million). A similar search
on Google Scholar reveals thousands of titles,
articles and reports outlining the problems facing
societies around the world.
Most of this research aims to improve our
understanding of the water ecosystem; when
viewed from a resource perspective, this is of
course very much a geographic issue, one that
presents both spatial and temporal challenges to
society. The water resource manager must ensure
that the right amount of water, of a suitable quality,
reaches the desired place at the appropriate time.
So the manager’s challenge is to balance supply
and demand in an ever-changing natural and social
environment, with a constantly-moving target.
In this respect, the expertise of hydrologists,
fluvial geomorphologists and geo-hydrologists,
is fundamental to any scientific modeling of the
water world. At the same time, though, we must
recognize the overwhelming significance of the
human environment and the powerful social,
economic, and political forces that create and
ultimately determine the directions of the water
crisis. Obviously this is no easy task. We need
scientifically-based studies of both the natural and
social environments to appreciate the complexity
of water problems and develop predictive and
explanatory models. Perhaps more importantly,
this must involve interdisciplinary initiatives

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

 Tobin
that cross traditional academic boundaries to
provide innovative solutions. Social scientists are
an essential part of this. In sum, good science is
required in its broadest sense combining traditional
natural sciences with qualitative and ethnographic
assessments of processes that facilitate or hinder
water understanding.
While acknowledging the many global water
problems, however, we should not dwell only on
doom and gloom. There have been and continue to
be many innovative ideas and practical initiatives
that have essentially “solved” certain water
problems and enhanced the human experience.
Since humans first began cultivation, water has
been harnessed to make life possible; the irrigation
projects of Mesopotamia, the grand aqueducts of
ancient Rome, and the modern protective dykes
of The Netherlands immediately come to mind. In
fact, engineering structures such as dams to ensure
water supply and levees to control flooding, water
treatment plants and sewage control systems,
agricultural irrigation systems and more, have
all brought prosperity to people across time and
space.
We also know that some projects have
exacerbated problems. The High Aswan Dam in
Egypt, the Three Gorges dam in China, and the
dams of India, for example, have raised all sorts
of questions about environmental degradation and
social inequalities. Many scholars have justifiably
argued that these constitute major environmental
catastrophes and have aggravated societal
inequalities. Privatization of water supplies, a
more recent global trend, has also led to social,
economic, and political pressures that inevitably
fall heavily on the most vulnerable. It is worth
noting that, while many nations claim the rights to
the water within their domains, few include access
to clean, potable water among the basic rights
of citizens or have such access written into their
constitutions.
Furthermore, completed water projects may
generate a false sense of security, creating the
perception that the drought, flood, or other water
crisis has been “solved.” The outcome may be
unwise behavior, such as increased development
in hazardous areas. In the case of flooding, levees
may lead to construction on the floodplain,
which results in catastrophic losses when, almost
UCOWR
inevitably, an event exceeds the design standards
of the project. The 2005 destruction of so many
buildings along the shoreline of the Gulf Coast
of the United States, from Hurricane Katrina,
attests to this effect. Once again, in New Orleans
it was those most vulnerable members of society,
especially the poor, who suffered the greatest. The
technological fix of mitigation projects, therefore,
can bring mixed blessings, and many scientists have
called for a comprehensive planning approach,
which includes both structural and non-structural
measures for all water projects, to overcome some
of these difficulties.
Thus “water wars” often stem from such projects
with their subsequent environmental or societal
problems. These “solutions” may intensify unrest
and bring high costs to many individuals while
benefiting just a few. One consideration, therefore,
is how to engender a more positive and inclusive
response to water challenges that is fair and just. As
noted, we have a considerable academic knowledge
base; it is appropriate implementation and follow-
through that is often missing.
Perhaps the real question, then, is how to harness
not only the political will to undertake action,
but also the will of the people to get involved.
The cyber-technology discussed by Smith in the
concluding chapter, may hold one key. Traditional
media sources, such as newspapers and television,
through which many once obtained their views of
the world, have now been joined and challenged
by the “participatory media.” Blogs, “citizen
journalism,” social networking sites, and the
capacity to transmit video and information almost
instantaneously over the Internet, have transformed
the global information environment. One need
only think of the vital role of digital technology
in mobilizing the recent political protests in Iran.
Indeed, this new media environment has facilitated
activism world-wide, focused around fair trade,
climate change, and any number of both right- and
left-wing political movements. This technology
could also bring attention to local and global water
issues, leading to mobilization and the invigoration
of participatory citizenship. Citizen movements
that insist on change go well beyond the academy
– but it is the duty of academics to make their
extensive knowledge known, and therefore useful.
In conclusion, there is indeed much ado about
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Water Promises: Much Ado about Nothing - As Profitless as Water in a Sieve? 

water, as there should be. And much is known Author Bio and Contact Information
about all the critical issues around this vital
resource. The challenge is to connect knowledge Graham A. Tobin Ph.D., University of Strathclyde,
with action – action that is socially just, is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the
University of South Florida specializing in natural
environmentally sustainable, and yet cost-effective.
hazards and water resources. He also serves as Associate
Thus, I argue that water issues must be addressed Vice President for Academic Affairs in the Office of
comprehensively through sound interdisciplinary the Provost with responsibility for Strategic Planning,
studies, while the key to effective application may Compact Planning, and Integrated Interdisciplinary
be action-based research promoted through grass- Initiatives. He can be contacted at: Graham A. Tobin,
roots involvement. We need, then, to generate Office of the Provost, 4202 East Fowler Ave (ADM
a genuine political will, as well as citizens’ 226), Tampa FL. 33620 or gtobin@acad.usf.edu. (http://
commitments to implement policies that support www.acad.usf.edu/Office/Strategic-Planning/).
healthy, sustainable communities – otherwise, the
vast array of scientific studies may just seep though
the sieve of political wrangling.
This volume addresses some of these issues,
exploring how geographically-based water research
will evolve over the next 20 years. It is not a
definitive text by any means, but the authors apply
diverse theoretical and methodological approaches
to a range of water concerns. Issues associated
with the natural environment, specifically hydro-
climatology, are examined by Hirschboek; Mackay
and Band look at eco-hydrological research, while
James advocates for an integrated approach to
water quality. Problems of water in agriculture
are examined by Harrington, energy by Wang
and natural hazards by Montz. Lant takes an
ecological economic approach to water resources
and Swyngedouw looks at the political economy.
Decision-making and disciplinary issues are the
focus of work by Rajagopal and Smith respectively,
while Wescoat and Wolf both take international
perspectives. Han provides an overview through
technology, stressing the significance of geo-
graphical information systems. Overall, this is an
eclectic collection of papers on water by experts in
their respective fields. As with all such exercises
in prognosticating, it will be interesting to see how
these forecasts turn out.

End Note
1. With apologies to William Shakespeare: The full
quote comes from Much Ado About Nothing,
Act Five, Scene 1 with Leonato explaining to
Antonio, “I pray thee cease thy counsel, which
falls into mine ears as profitless as water in a
sieve.”

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR



Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 4-9, August 2009

Future Hydroclimatology and the

Research Challenges of a Post-Stationary World
Katherine K. Hirschboeck
Associate Professor of Climatology, University of Arizona, Tucson

Stationarity is dead (Milly et al. 2008). this record – either in the past or in years to come.

T
his provocative statement issued recently
in Science directly challenges the basic
assumption underlying the way surface
water resources in much of the developed world
have been managed for decades. Milly et al.
(2008) claim that anthropogenically-induced
climate change is the reason that stationarity has
died and “cannot be revived.” Although they
acknowledge that the validity of the assumption
has been questioned regularly in the past, Milly
et al. highlight a pressing need to address this
issue due to a convergence of observations and
research findings that demonstrates the urgency
of the influence of climate change and variability
on surface water processes. Specifically, they note
that projected changes in future runoff “are large
enough to push hydroclimate beyond the range of
historical behaviors” (p 573). With this imperative
in mind, in this essay, after first addressing the call
to move beyond the stationarity assumption, I
present a series of questions and suggestions on how
hydroclimatic research might be integrated into a
future water resources agenda for geographers that
addresses a “post-stationary” world, especially
with respect to hydrologic extremes.
Beyond Stationarity
When a hydroclimatic time series is said to be
stationary, its statistical properties (e.g., mean,
variance, skewness, etc.) are all assumed to be
constant over time. In practice this means that the
probabilities derived from, say, a time series of
annual stream flows or instantaneous flood peaks
from a gauged record will be reliable estimators
of the variability of those processes outside of
Those who study hydroclimatic processes as they
vary over long time periods are quick to point out
that in the physical world, the means and variances
of hydroclimatic variables do indeed change over
time due to climate variability, geomorphic change,
land use alterations, and a variety of other factors.
Hence for such researchers “stationarity has
always been dead.” Yet the stationarity assumption
has prevailed in water resources research, practical
applications, and engineering design because of
its operational utility and the lack of alternative
methods to address the mathematical complexity
of modeling nonstationary processes. If, as Milly
et al. propose, we have come to the end of an era of
natural hydroclimatic change and variability that
is “sufficiently small to allow stationarity-based
design,” a critical research need in upcoming
decades will be to find innovative ways to grapple
with analyzing, managing, and adapting to the
water resources of a post-stationary world.
Post-Stationary Hydroclimatology
and Geographic Research
The subfield of hydroclimatology has long
been an active area of research for water resource
geographers (see Mather 1991, Shelton 2009).
Studies of surface water processes from a climatic,
geomorphic, biogeographic, and cryosphere-based
approach have engaged physical geographers for
decades, as have studies of water resources from the
perspective of policy, risk, and culture. A perusal
of recent professional meeting presentations and
published work by geographers reveals ongoing
efforts that cover a wide array of hydroclimatic
and water-related research topics including:

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 Future Hydroclimatology and the Research Challenges of a Post-Stationary World
local and global water balance components;
soil moisture variations; streamflow variability;
snowpack and snow cover extent; changes in
timing of spring snowmelt; synoptic circulation
patterns for moisture delivery; land-atmosphere
feedbacks; paleoclimatology and paleohydrology;
causes and variability of extreme precipitation;
floods, droughts and other water-related hazards;
water policy issues; and the impact of water supply
variations on past and present societies. Unifying
many of these efforts is the emerging issue of water-
related vulnerability and adaptation to a changing
climate that links the biogeophysical and social
science traditions within water resource geography
in new and profound ways.
How might these avenues of current hydro-
climatic research be re-envisioned to meet the
complex needs of a “post-stationary” world?
Following are three of the most critical areas
in need of fresh insights and expertise from
hydroclimatologists as we face a future when
hydrologic processes are expected to extend well
beyond the range of historical behaviors:
1. Hydroclimatic change, including rising
temperatures and shifts in the seasonal
timing of snowmelt as they affect local
and regional water balances and water
supplies;
2. Hydrologic extremes, including droughts
and floods, which have been projected to
increase in magnitude and/or frequency
in response to an intensification of the
hydrologic cycle under global climate
change; and
3. Cross-disciplinary and integrated assess-
ments of how hydroclimatic changes
have – and will – affect relationships
between geophysical, socio-economic and
ecological systems across multiple spatial
and temporal scales.
A list of key questions for advancing a vibrant
hydroclimatology research agenda in each of these
three areas follows. A unifying theme emerges
from the perspective of the essential geographic
themes of region and scale, and how sensitivity to
them is essential to meet the research challenges of
a post-stationary world.
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education

Hydroclimatic Change
• Which geographic regions are most
vulnerable to changes in the extent and
timing of seasonal hydroclimatic events
(extreme summer heat, winter snowfall,
spring snowmelt, etc.) and what impacts
will such changes have on local and
regional water issues?
• How can modeled projections of future
precipitation and other changing moisture-
related components of the global energy
balance (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change 2007) be applied effectively to
regional and watershed-scale areas
to address biogeophysical and socio-
economic water issues of the future?
• What are the most effective communication
mechanisms and scales for translating
the science about hydroclimatic change
into formats that will foster effective
adaptive management to expected changes
via stakeholder interactions, policies,
decision-making, and action across diverse
societal settings, cultures, and geographic
regions?
Hydrologic Extremes
• How will the projected “intensified”
global hydrologic cycle (Trenberth et al.
2003) manifest itself regionally, and how
will we know that observed hydroclimatic
extremes in specific geographic areas have
been affected, if and when they are?
• Will the droughts and floods of the future
be distinctly different in magnitude and
frequency from those of the present (or
past) under this intensified regime?
• If projected hydroclimatic intensification
changes the nature of extremes in given
regions, how can probability estimates
of extreme events be developed when
assumptions of stationarity or linearity
may no longer apply?
• In what ways can extended paleo-records
of reconstructed droughts, floods, and
stream flow be used to provide evidence
of extremes that have occurred prior to
the gauged record in specific watersheds,
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 Hirschboeck
thereby offering an expanded range of
possible scenarios for future projections?
How can the issue of nonstationarity be
addressed when paleo-data are appended
to gauged data to produce long time-series?
How can extreme-value statistics derived
from these long time-series be augmented
with climate information and used in
innovative ways to reduce uncertainties in
the future?
• Which global geographic regions are
currently most vulnerable to floods and
droughts and will this vulnerability
increase or decrease as climate changes?
Which additional regions might begin to
experience extreme events more often in
response to latitudinally shifting extra-
tropical or tropical storm tracks? Which
regions are most at risk or least resilient
to flooding and inundation from rising
sea level, including small islands where
local changes may be harbingers of
more widespread, global impacts? Will
local communities need to rezone their
floodplains to become more resilient to
an uncertain hydroclimate and, if so, what
might the floodplain maps of the future
look like?
Integrated Assessments
• Milly et al. note that “In a nonstationary
world, continuity of observation is
critical” (p 574). How will lengthy and
continuous observing networks be
maintained, especially when resources to
do so are limited in many of the world’s
most climatically sensitive regions?
As advances in remote sensing allow
increasingly sophisticated observations
over broad areas of the globe at multiple
scales (National Research Council 2008),
how can persons and networks on the
ground be integrated into data collection
to address validation? In particular,
how might the engagement of “citizen
scientists” aid in observing and monitoring
the effects of hydroclimate change? (See,
for example the USA National Phenology
Network http://www.usanpn.org/).
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• At the watershed scale, how can new,
bi-directional, translational science
approaches be used to move hydroclimatic
research “from the laboratory into the field”
to address stakeholder and watershed-
based needs, concomitant with moving the
field experience of water managers “from
the watershed to the laboratory.”
• At the regional scale, what methods, data
sets, and cross-disciplinary approaches will
most effectively communicate complex
climate-sensitive issues of concern to water
resource decision-makers, emergency
managers, and policy planners (e.g.,
Jacobs et al. 2005)? What will comprise
functional data sets in various global
scenarios, and how can they be shared?
• How can an integrated geographic
understanding of the biogeophysical and
socio-economic attributes of watersheds
and larger areas be applied toward the
building of multiple scenarios for assessing
the impacts of future climate and adapting
to it?
• Across all scales, what are the complex
and interacting water-related mechanisms
and processes that result in the emergence,
sustainability, or collapse of socio-
ecological systems (Costanza et al. 2007)?
How can this be integrated into our
models, while recalling that culture itself
has always been dynamic and implicitly
nonstationary?
Research Needs for the Future
To address these questions, realigned priorities,
new approaches, and improved tools and data sets
will become increasingly important (e.g., Gupta
2000, Logan and Helsabeck 2009) and innovative
statistical techniques for modeling nonstationary
behaviors in hydroclimatic processes will be
required (Griffis and Stedinger 2007, Milly et
al. 2008). Downscaling methods will need to
be advanced and the limitations, accuracy, and
precision of their results clearly communicated,
especially at the watershed scale (Pulwarty 2003).
“Scaling up” from local data and the identification
of process-based linkages between local stream flow
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Future Hydroclimatology and the Research Challenges of a Post-Stationary World
and regional and global circulation, will become as
important as scaling down “from globally forced
regional models” (Pulwarty 2003, Hirschboeck
2003). Innovations will be needed in the quest
to define teleconnections and linkages between
regional variations in stream flow, snow pack, or
drought and indices of large-scale atmospheric
and oceanic circulation patterns (see McCabe and
Dettinger 2002, McCabe et al. 2004, Kingston et
al. 2006, Redmond and Koch 1991). This latter
effort is critical for addressing nonstationarity by
obtaining a better understanding of low-frequency
variations in hydroclimatic time series. Another
more elusive goal, and one of great importance,
is that of reliable long-term climate forecasts.
These would be issued for use in water resource
management by a future National Climate Service
(see Miles et al. 2006). For any of the approaches
noted above, developing problem-specific and
regionally tailored atmospheric circulation indices
may prove especially useful.
A new awareness among water managers about
the impact of climatic change on water supplies
has highlighted a need for expanded data sets
that capture a much wider range of hydroclimatic
and streamflow variability – and their driving
mechanisms – than is available in systematically
gauged records. Such long-period records will be
essential for demand-side analyses, as well as for
future scenario modeling. Researchers are already
active in developing these data sets for use in water
management operations and decision-making via
stochastic model runs, compilation of historical
meteorological and climatic records (e.g., Mock
2003), reconstructing long records of precipitation,
drought and stream flow using tree rings (e.g.,
MacDonald 2007, Woodhouse and Lukas 2006,
Woodhouse et al. 2006), and defining paleo-stage
indicators of past extreme floods (see House et
al. 2002). Paleo-data studies can also address the
role of extreme events in shaping past human-
environmental interactions (e.g., Magilligan and
Goldstein 2001, Therrell et al. 2004).
As more managers recognize the need for a
systematic integration of long-term data into their
water management operations for informing water
allocation, the next 20 years should be a fruitful
field for both modelers and paleo-researchers. In
addition, models that integrate surface hydrology
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education

and demand, dynamic human geographic data
and scenario-driven atmospheric circulations of
changing climate will provide another important
avenue of research.
Effective cross-disciplinary communication
about water issues that can capture all of the
contingencies described above will require a
new generation of visualizations for integrated
assessments, planning, adaptation, and creative
outreach across diverse societies and cultures.
New maps and other visualizations that can handle
multiple dimensions of complexity – including
nonstationarity and nonlinearity – will also be
needed to generate and articulate theories about the
interacting water-related mechanisms and processes
that result in the emergence, sustainability, or
collapse of geophysical, ecological, and socio-
economic systems, both regionally and globally.
Water resources geography’s traditional
strengths in hydroclimatology and surface water
processes at the watershed and regional scale have
already laid an excellent foundation for a vibrant
research agenda for the next 20 years, but the post-
stationary future of hydroclimatology will require
real innovation in research approaches. It will be
especially important for geographers to continue to
carve out unique niches and areas of expertise within
the vast climate-change research arena. Climate-
based initiatives that address water resources in the
context of meteorological and climatic hazards and
human-environment interactions such as Weather
and Society – Integrated Studies (WAS*IS), http://
www.sip.ucar.edu/wasis/, and the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA)
Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessment
program (RISA), http://www.climate.noaa.gov/
cpo_pa/risa/, are excellent forums in which to
foster stakeholder interactions and opportunities
for translational science (e.g., Bales et al. 2004).
At the same time, there are many “basic science”
and theoretical research questions in need of
fresh and creative re-thinking, ranging from how
to assign probabilities to a nonstationary stream
flow time series, to how to model nonlinearities
in hydroclimatic processes, to how to accomplish
long-range water resource planning when faced
with the specter of abrupt hydroclimatic change
– or even “climate surprises” (Overpeck 1996).
It is particularly important to note that the
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 Hirschboeck
assumption of future nonstationarity precludes
an expectation that a single research approach
or solution to changing conditions will be all
that is required. Effective management of water
resources in a post-stationary world must be able to
constantly adapt and adjust. Enhanced monitoring
of hydroclimatic changes will need to be paired
with iterative interactions with stakeholders as
old analogs fail and new surprises emerge. This
will require a research agenda that has the ability
to be timely, flexible, and nimble enough to
respond quickly to continually evolving and newly
emerging needs.
Closing Remarks
In a changing world that is expected to face
a range of future hydroclimatic processes for
which our current approaches are ill-equipped, we
need to take advantage of all types and manner
of hydroclimatic data, invent novel and creative
ways to analyze it, and develop powerful and
practical ways of communicating and visualizing
the results. For this, temporal depth is the
necessary companion to spatial detail in any
geographic analysis. Integrated assessments that
link geophysical, biological, and social sciences
across multiple temporal and spatial scales
are a necessity for navigating the increasingly
complex and interrelated local, regional, and
global environments of a post-stationary world.
As suggested by Costanza et al. (2007, p 526),
“The insight, data and models generated from the
close collaboration of environmental historians,
archeologists, ecologists, modelers and many others
[i.e., geographers] will allow the construction and
testing of new ideas about humans’ relationship
with the rest of nature.”
Acknowledgments
Inspiration and support for this essay was
provided by the Climate Assessment for the
Southwest (CLIMAS) (NOAA Cooperative
Agreement no. NA07OAR4310382). Special
thanks go to Dr. Mike Crimmins of the University
of Arizona who provided valuable insights about
adaptive management needs.
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Author Bio and Contact Information
Katherine K. Hirschboeck is an Associate Professor
of Climatology at the University of Arizona in
the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research. She also
chairs the University of Arizona’s Global Change
Graduate Interdisciplinary Program. Her research and
teaching address climatology, dendroclimatology,
hydroclimatology, and the climatology of extreme
events in the past and present – especially the analysis of
flood-producing atmospheric processes and tree-growth
responses to anomalous atmospheric circulation patterns.
Dr. Hirschboeck also holds joint faculty appointments
in the departments of Hydrology & Water Resources,
Geography & Regional Development, and Atmospheric
Sciences. She can be reached at: The Laboratory of
Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona, Tucson AZ
85721, email: katie@ltrr.arizona.edu.
References
Bales, R. C., D. M. Liverman and B. J. Morehouse.
2004. Integrated assessment as a step toward reducing
climate vulnerability in the Southwestern United
States. Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society, 85: 1727-1734.
Costanza, R., L. Graumlich, W. Steffen, C. Crumley, J.
Dearing, K. Hibbard, R. Leemans, C. Redman, and
D. Schimel. 2007. Sustainability or collapse: What
can we learn from integrating the history of humans
and the rest of nature? Ambio 36:522-527.
Griffis, V. W. and J. R. Stedinger. 2007. Incorporating
climate change and variability into Bulletin 17B
LP3 Model. ASCE Conference Proceedings of
the World Environmental and Water Resources
Congress 2007: Restoring Our Natural Habitat,
May 15-19, 2007, Tampa, Florida, USA, pp. 1-8,
(doi 10.1061/40927(243)69).
Gupta, V. K. 2000. WEB Report: A Framework for
Reassessment of Basic Research and Educational
Priorities in Hydrologic Sciences. Report of a
Hydrology Workshop, Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Jan. 31- Feb.1, 1999, to the NSF-GEO Directorate.
http://cires.colorado.edu/science/groups/gupta/
projects/web/report/index.html.
Hirschboeck, K. K. 2003. Respecting the drainage
divide: A perspective on hydrological change and
scale. Journal of Contemporary Water Research
and Education, formerly Water Resources Update
126:54-59.
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Future Hydroclimatology and the Research Challenges of a Post-Stationary World
House, P. K., R. H. Webb, V. R. Baker and D. Levish
(eds.). 2002. Ancient Floods, Modern Hazards:
Principles and Applications of Paleoflood Hydrology.
American Geophysical Union Water Science and
Application 5. 385 pp.
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Fourth Assessment Report (AR4). 2007. Climate
Change 2007: The Physical Basis. http://ipcc-wg1.
ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html.
Jacobs, K. L., G. M. Garfin and B. J. Morehouse.
2005. Climate Science and Drought Planning: The
Arizona Experience, Journal of the American Water
Resources Association 41: 437-445.
Kingston, D. G., D. M. Lawler and G. R. McGregor.
2006. Linkages between atmospheric circulation,
climate and streamflow in the northern North
Atlantic: research prospects. Progress in Physical
Geography 30: 143-174.
Logan, W. S. and L. J. Helsabeck. 2009. Research and
Applications Needs in Flood Hydrology Science,
National Academies Press: Washington D.C.
MacDonald, G. M. 2007. Severe and sustained drought in
southern California and the West: Present conditions
and insights from the past on causes and impacts.
Quaternary International 173-174: 87-100.
Magilligan, F. J. and P. S. Goldstein. 2001. El Niño floods
and culture change: A late Holocene flood history for
the Rio Moquegua, southern Peru. Geology 29: 431-
434.
Mather, J. R. 1991. A history of hydroclimatology.
Physical Geography 12: 260-273.
McCabe G. J., M. D. Dettinger. 2002. Primary modes and
predictability of year-to-year snowpack variations in
the western United States from teleconnections with
Pacific Ocean climate. Journal of Hydrometeorology
3:13–25.
McCabe G. J., M. A. Palecki, J. L. Betancourt. 2004.
Pacific and Atlantic Ocean influences on multidecadal
drought frequency in the United States. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences 101: 4136–
4141.
Miles, E. L., A. K. Snover, L. C. Whitely Binder, E.
S. Sarachik, P. W. Mote, and N. Mantua. 2006. An
approach to designing a national climate service.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
103: 19616-19623.
Milly, P. C. D. and J. Betancourt, M. Falkenmark, R. M.
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Hirsch, Z. W. Kundzewicz, D. P. Lettenmaier and R.
J.Stouffer. 2008. Stationarity is dead: Whither water
management? Science 319:573-574.
Mock, C. 2003. Tropical Cyclone Reconstructions from
Documentary Records: Examples for South Carolina,
United States. Pages 121-148 in R.J. Murnane and
Kam-biu Liu (eds.) Hurricanes and Typhoons Past,
Present, and Future. Columbia University Press:
New York.
National Research Council. 2008. Integrating Multiscale
Observations of U.S. Waters. National Academies
Press: Washington D.C.
Overpeck, J. T. 1996. Warm Climate Surprises. Science
271: 1820-1821.
Pulwarty, R. S., Jr. 2003. Climate and water in the west:
science information and decision-making. Journal
of Contemporary Water Research and Education,
formerly Water Resources Update 124: 4-12.
Redmond, K. T. and R. W. Koch. 1991. Surface climate
and streamflow variability in the western United
States and their relationship to large-scale circulation
indices. Water Resources Research 27: 2381-2399.
Shelton, M. I. 2009. Hydroclimatology, Perspectives
and Applications. Cambridge University Press: New
York.
Therrell, M. D., D. W. Stahle, R. Acuna Soto. 2004.
Aztec drought and the curse of One Rabbit. Bulletin
of the American Meteorological Society 85: 1263-
1272.
Trenberth, K. E., A. Dai, R. M. Rasmussen, and D. B.
Parsons. 2003. The changing character of precipitation.
Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 84:
1205-1217.
Woodhouse, C. A. and J. J. Lukas. 2006. Multi-century
tree-ring reconstructions of Colorado streamflow for
water resource planning. Climatic Change 78: 293-
315.
Woodhouse, C. A., S. T. Gray, and D. M. Meko. 2006.
Updated streamflow reconstructions for the Upper
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W05415. doi:10.1029/2005WR004455.
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10
Universities Council on Water Resources
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 10-15, August 2009
Integrating Water-Quality into a
Water Resources Research Agenda
L. Allan James
Professor, Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, Columbia
A
20-year agenda for water resources research
will need to dedicate substantial attention to
water quality and assimilate water quality
into traditional concerns about water availability
and allocation. Water quality is inseparably
linked to the utility of available water and to the
viability of social and environmental systems.
Unfortunately, water quality has received relatively
little consideration in water resources research
relative to water quantity and has been treated in
isolation of other aspects of water resources. At
the global scale, a water resources research agenda
should address the threats that poor water quality
makes to global water resources and ecological
sustainability and, conversely, the adverse effects
that poor environmental management can have on
water quality. At the local scale, water resources
research should adopt methods of integrated
watershed management to ensure that water
quality is included in management and planning.
At all scales, water resources research must be
cognizant of the threat that poor water quality
imposes on human health and the quality of life.
Fundamental changes have taken place in resource
and environmental management with regards to
global environmental change and sustainability,
integration of systems and management activities
at the small watershed scale, and the potential for
ecological damage and threats to public health
from modern and legacy sources of contamination.
These changes require that water quality be a
central concern incorporated and fully integrated
into a vibrant 20-year water resources research
agenda.
A recent study of water resources research
needed in the U.S. for the coming century (National
Research Council 2001), concluded that 20th century
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water resources research focused too narrowly
on water quantity, took a short-term view, failed
to afford adequate consideration of water quality,
and tended to treat water quality in isolation. The
study called for a holistic view of water resources
research with more consideration of environmental
contaminants and their effects on water quality.
They recommended a broader framework for water
resources research that incorporates water quality
data acquisition, recognizes legacy pollution, and
acknowledges the vulnerability and resilience
of environmental systems to non-point source
pollution loadings.
…the legacy of pollution that has already occurred
must be addressed, in addition to the new sources
of pollution that are currently going unabated.
In particular, greater research is required on
nonpoint source pollution, which accounts for
nearly three quarters of the contaminant loading
to surface water and groundwater in the United
States… More knowledge is needed about the
susceptibility and resilience of terrestrial and
aquatic environments to contaminant loadings,
as the long-term impacts of contaminant
accumulation may eventually undermine overall
ecological function. The successful management
of water quality in the twenty-first century will
require a more comprehensive understanding of
the ways in which the environment processes
contaminants, how those processes vary, and
their robustness as contaminant loads grow…
(National Research Council 2001:14-15).
The Context of Global Environmental
Change and Sustainability
A 20-year vibrant agenda for water resources
research should be compatible with rapidly evolving
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Integrating Water-Quality into a Water Resources Research Agenda
needs to address global environmental change.
Long-range water quality planning should reflect
global change initiatives owing to the close ties
between water quality and environmental quality
and ecosystem viability. Rapid population growth
and the need to increase irrigation to produce
ample food to support this growth, will drive the
need to protect water quality. Projections of global
agricultural impacts estimate that ~109 hectares of
natural ecosystems will be converted to agriculture
by 2050 more than doubling eutrophication
of terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal marine
ecosystems by nitrogen and phosphorus and similar
increases in pesticide use (Tilman et al. 2001).
Water quality can threaten water supplies
and vice versa. Serious water quality disasters
resulting from poor water management include
the shrinking of the Aral Sea (Micklin 1988), and
mingling of sewage with water supplies beneath
Mexico City (Cisneros-Iturbe and Domínguez-
Mora 2005, Edmunds et al. 2002, Gonzalez-Moran
et al. 1999). The water resources research agenda
should recognize the dangers to water availability
imposed by poor water quality and the importance
of water quantity management to water quality.
Sustainability is an essential goal for viable
long-term water-resources planning in general
and is specifically applicable to developing a
water quality management agenda for the next 20
years. Sustainability refers to rates and methods
of resource use that can be maintained for long
periods without substantial depletion or damage
to resources or social and environmental systems.
Sustainable development concepts began to be
applied globally early in the 1980s as a means
of protecting life-support systems of the Earth
while ensuring human needs (National Research
Council 1999a). They were initiated from a social
and political perspective, gained scientific and
technological backing as sustainability science
(Clark and Dickson 2003, Kates et al. 2001),
and have now achieved widespread acceptance.
Sustainable development was formally recognized
as a guiding principle for international policy
formulation at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit
Conference in 1992. The Rio Declaration includes
27 principles in support of global sustainability
principles (Quarrie 1995). Water-quality elements
of the water resources research agenda will
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
11
be essential to and should adopt a long-term,
sustainable vision of resources management.
The Context of Integrated Watershed
Management for Local Water Quality
Management
The old adage “think globally but act locally”
applies to water resources research. At the local
scale, water quality is controlled by watershed
conditions, so watershed management can be the
first line of defense. A water resources research
agenda for the next 20 years should encourage
integrated watershed perspectives that consider
systems as integrated and highly inter-dependent
(National Research Council 1999b, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency 1993, 1996).
Similarly, integrated approaches to water resources
management that promote consideration of water
systems as highly inter-related are recommended
(United Nations 1992: Section 18.36). No
consensus exists about precise definitions of
integrated watershed management or integrated
water resources management, but certain goals
are implied including interagency coordination,
public involvement, consideration of interactions
between physical, biological, and social systems,
and spatially distributed methods of characterizing
these processes. Watershed management does not
necessarily require a centralized watershed program
emphasizing science, planning, a formal public
participatory process, and detailed management
plans. It has been argued that all watersheds are
managed to some degree by a range of governmental
and non-governmental agents and that watershed
management programs should seek to coordinate
these efforts; that is, watershed management can be
seen as a form of intergovernmental management
(Imperial and Hennessey 2000). Watershed
management approaches are essential to water
quality management because watershed processes
– including human and biological interactions
– are translated to the quality of water passing
through the watershed by surface and subsurface
pathways. The success of watershed approaches,
however, should not be measured solely by overall
environmental outcomes owing to other factors
controlling environmental change (Born and
Genskow 2000).
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12 James
Linkages between watershed management
and water quality underlie the rationale for much
spatially distributed water quality modeling that
simulates pollution-reduction, crop management,
or ecological enhancement to reduce damages
associated with sedimentation and contaminant
releases (Zhang et al. 2009). Moreover, watershed-
based management has been institutionalized by U. S.
regulatory procedures. The U. S. Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) spent approximately
$204 million in fiscal year 2006 alone on Section
319, Clean Water Act, grants to reduce nonpoint-
source pollution, and much of this effort focused on
watershed-based plans (Hardy and Koontz 2008).
An example of watershed management aimed
primarily at domestic water quality protection is
provided by the Croton watershed, which serves
water supplies for New York City (National
Research Council 2000).
Legal justifications for incorporating water
quality protection in a U.S. agenda arise from
federal legislation. Water quality is directly linked
to congressional acts such as the Clean Water Act
and Safe Drinking Water Act as well as to broader
environmental legislation such as the National
Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species
Act. The Clean Water Act requires protection of
the chemical, physical, and biological integrity
of the nation’s waters by the EPA. Among other
provisions, the Clean Water Act requires states
to identify problem watersheds and to estimate
the maximum sum of point and nonpoint-source
loadings that these sites can assimilate as total
maximum daily loads (TMDLs). Technical manuals
to assist with TMDL procedures for nutrients,
sediment, and pathogens review monitoring and
assessment procedures (USEPA 1999a, 1999b,
2001). The TMDL program has greatly encouraged
watershed planning for protecting water quality in
the U.S.
Management of ground water quality in the U.S.
differs from surface water because planning units
are not defined by watersheds. Sources of ground
water pollution include landfills, buried tanks, salt
water intrusion, and pesticide applications. In
addition to dissolved solids and pathogens, dense
and light non-aqueous phase liquids (DNAPLs
and LNAPLs) and pharmaceuticals have been of
growing concern to ground water quality (Fetter
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1993). The Safe Drinking Water Act established
maximum contaminant loads and other standards for
drinking water supplies, and the 1986 amendments
(PL 99-339) added three ground water protection
programs. As pressure mounts on ground water
supplies, the 20-year water resources research
agenda should include vigilant maintenance of the
viability and enforceability of such laws and support
the introduction of additional legislation to keep
apace of new pollutants and pollutant pathways.
Ground water protections plans should be an
essential element of watershed management.
Contaminants in Sediments, Soils,
and Aquifers
Water quality is driven by exchanges between
water and its surrounding media. Thus, more needs
to be known about the potential toxicity of biologic
and geologic materials in the beds and banks of
lakes and rivers and in ground water aquifers. Vast
repositories of legacy sediment contain high levels
of hazardous or toxic materials that may be subject
to remobilization. In the U.S., contamination from
legacy materials is an important concern; the
need to remediate hazardous waste sites led to the
creation of EPA Superfund program (Daley and
Layton 2004). Unfortunately, the geochemistry
of sediment varies greatly at the local scale with
geology, biology, climate, topography, land-use
history, and point-source discharges, so extensive
sampling, laboratory analyses, and data cataloguing
are needed to locate and characterize areas of
concern. The EPA established Sediment Quality
Guidelines to measure the extent of contamination
and to limit additional contamination (McCauley et
al. 2000). The Guidelines provide a comprehensive
catalogue and analysis of sediment geochemistry
and related biological data in the U.S. (EPA 1998
a, b, c). They describe where contaminants reach
potentially harmful levels in river, lake, ocean, and
estuary sediments and the potential for adverse
effects on human and aquatic life. Volume 1 (EPA
1998a) describes the likelihood of adverse effects
of contaminated sediment on human or ecological
systems, Volume 2 (EPA 1998b) provides maps
of sampling stations and chemical and biological
data summaries for watersheds containing Areas
of Probable Concern, and Volume 3 (EPA 1998c)
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Integrating Water-Quality into a Water Resources Research Agenda
identifies likely point-source sediment pollutant
contributions. The agenda should advocate the
maintenance and extension of this database and its
integration with policy.
At all scales, a standardized assessment and
synthesis of sediment quality data is needed to
identify problem areas and allow study of process
linkages such as aquatic responses and resilience.
This assessment should employ standardized
methods to provide comparable data between
studies. It should also include methods that will
reflect the reactivity of substances in sediment
with water and aquatic biota. Total digest methods
can be useful to water quality studies, but future
research on contaminant uptake will need to shift
emphasis from total elemental concentrations
to the solubility and bioavailability of toxic
substances. The bulk composition of sediments,
soils, and aquifer materials is usually dominated by
elements locked up inside mineral grains and not
readily available for uptake. From a water quality
perspective, the toxicity of thin outer coatings on
mineral grains that are actively exchanged with
surrounding fluids and micro-organisms may have
greater relevance than total sediment chemistry.
Concentrations in coatings can be measured by
weak acid extractions (Loring and Rantala 1992).
The position of sediment also plays an important
role in the transfer of contaminants to water
supplies and aquatic organisms. For instance,
toxicity in the hyporheic zone of rivers and lakes
and near well-heads of domestic water supplies is
of greater concern than in sediments at a greater
distance from ecologic activity or points of water
extraction. The agenda should seek and adopt
standardized sediment-sampling protocols that
consider these methods and site locations.
Conclusion
Water quality is inextricably tied to the viability
of water resources availability and resilience.
Incorporating water quality into a holistic
management scheme is essential for sustainable
water resources management, so a vibrant water
resources research agenda must account for
interdependencies between the quality and quantity
of water. This greatly increases the complexity
of water-resources planning because it requires
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
13
consideration of water quality over broad scales of
time and space and the interactions with ground
water aquifers, legacy river and lake sediment, and
biologic systems. The water quality aspects of the
agenda must be sustainable and should include
consideration of maintaining and developing a
viable legal system of regulations and incentive
programs.
Author Bio and Contact Information
L. Allan James, professor of Geography, joined the
University of South Carolina Geography Department in
1988. He earned a Ph.D. in Geography and Geology
(held jointly, 1988), and masters degrees in Geography
(1983) and Water-Resources Management (1981) from
the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a BA in
Geography at U.C. Berkeley (1978). His research focuses
on fluvial geomorphology, historical sedimentation,
flood hydrology, and water resources management. He
has published more than 30 refereed journals articles
and three books and serves on editorial boards of
Geomorphology, the Southeastern Geographer, and
Royale Geographic Society, Advancing Geography
and Geographical Learning book series. He can be
contacted at Geography Department, USC, Columbia,
SC 29208; E-mail: AJames@sc.edu; Web: http://people.
cas.sc.edu/ajames/.
References
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approach: An empirical assessment of innovation
in environmental management. Research Paper
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Available at: http://www.napawash.org/pc_economy_
environment/epafile0701.pdf.
Cisneros-Iturbe, H. L. and R. Domínguez-Mora. 2005.
Strategy to allow the inspection of the deep drainage
system of Mexico City. In, pp. 212-220, Savic, D.A.,
J.C. Bertoni, M.A. MariZo, and H.H.G. Savenije
(Eds.), Sustainable Water Management Solutions for
Large Cities. IAHS Pub. 293; 301 pp.
Clark, W. C. and N. M. Dickson. 2003. Sustainability
science: The emerging research program. Proc.
National Academy of Sciences 100(14): 8059-8061.
Daley, D. M. and D. F. Layton. 2004. Policy
implementation and the Environmental Protection
Agency: What factors influence remediation at
Superfund Sites? The Policy Studies Journal 32(3):
375-392.
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14
Edmunds, W. M., J. J. Carrillo-Rivera, and A. Cardona.
2002. Geochemical evolution of groundwater beneath
Mexico City. Journal of Hydrology 258: 1-24.
Fetter, C. W. 1993. Contaminant Hydrogeology.
Prentice Hall: Upper Saddle River, NJ; 458 pp.
González-Morán, T., R. Rodríguez, and S. A. Cortes.
1999. The Basin of Mexico and its metropolitan
area: Water abstraction and related environmental
problems. Journal of South American Earth Sciences
12: 607-613.
Hardy, S. and T. Koontz. 2008. Reducing nonpoint
source pollution through collaboration: Policies and
programs across the U. S. states. Environmental
Management 41(3): 301-310. DOI 10.1007/s00267-
007-9038-6.
Imperial, M. T. and T. Hennessey. 2000. Environmental
governance in watersheds: The importance of
collaboration to institutional performance. Nat.
Academy of Public Admin., Research Paper No. 8.
Wash., D.C. http://www.napawash.org/pc_economy_
environment/epafile08.pdf.
Kates, R. W., W. C. Clark, R. Corell, J. M. Hall, C. C.
Jaeger, I. Lowe, J. J. McCarthy, H. J. Schellnhuber,
B. Bolin, N. M. Dickson, S. Faucheux, G. C.
Gallopin, A. Grübler, B. Huntley, J. Jäger, N. S.
Jodha, R. E. Kasperson, A. Mabogunje, P. Matson,
H. Mooney, B. Moore III, T. O’Riordan, U. Svedin.
2001. Environment and development: Sustainability
science. Science 292: 641-642.
Loring, D. H., Rantala, R. T. T. 1992. Manual for
geochemical analyses of marine sediments and
suspended particulate matter. Earth-Science Reviews
32: 235–283.
McCauley, D. J., G. M. DeGraeve, and T. K. Linton,
2000. Sediment quality guidelines and assessment:
Overview and research needs. Environmental
Science and Policy 3: S133-S144.
Micklin, P. P. 1988. Dessication of the Aral Sea: A water
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National Academy Press: Washington, DC; 363 pp.
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the New York City Strategy. National Academy Press:
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Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

16

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 16-24, August 2009

Integrated Ecohydrologic Research and Hydro-Informatics

D. Scott Mackay1 and Lawrence E. Band2
1
State University of New York at Buffalo; 2University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill

T
he purpose of this paper is to offer our view
of where ecohydrologic research will be
going in the next 20 years and suggest how
enabling technologies from hydro-informatics will
support this research. Two decades ago Klemeš
(1986) suggested that the hydrologist’s “efforts
expended on the fitting of flood and drought
frequency curves would be better spent in acquiring
deeper knowledge of climatology, meteorology,
geology, and ecology.” Klemeš was of course
calling for interdisciplinary hydrology. Recently, a
number of community reports have proposed a more
interdisciplinary approach to hydrology, including
the development of community infrastructure
such as large scale hydrologic observatories with
integrated, multi-scale monitoring and advanced
informatics tools to enable this research (Band et
al. 2002, Gupta et al. 1999, Hornberger et al. 2000,
Maidment 2008). Specific calls were included
to integrate the more physically or statistically
oriented approaches in hydrology with ecosystem
sciences including biogeochemical cycling and
population ecology.
The emergence of ecohydrologic research is one
example of how hydrologic science has begun to
move in this direction. Ecohydrologic research
seeks to understand how hydrological processes
affect biological communities, and in turn how such
communities affect water cycling (Newman et al.
2006, Rodriguez-Iturbe 2000). With this marriage
of ecology and hydrology new avenues of research
are opening up, and with these come new scientific
and technical challenges. Some of the scientific
challenges relate to the long-term memory in
biological and geomorphic systems, complex
feedbacks on water cycling, and the continuum of
such interactions across space. Technical challenges
include building more sophisticated simulation
models to deal with such spatial dynamics,
acquiring and managing the data needed to support
these models, improving geo-visualization of
spatial predictions and errors, and quantifying
uncertainty associated with model structure and
parameterization. Another interdisciplinary sub-
field of hydrology, hydroinformatics, emphasizes
the development of information technology to help
meet these challenges.
Newman et al. (2006) identified a number of
research challenges for ecohydrologic research in
semi-arid regions, including dealing with spatial
and temporal heterogeneity, scaling up to regional
and global extent, improving understanding of
subsurface processes, and addressing long-term
processes. They argue for a greater emphasis on
place-based research where long-term data sets
are being compiled. Efforts aimed at addressing
these problems are underway, albeit with a
focus on vegetation in semi-arid environments,
equilibrium models with stochastic inputs, and
knowledge obtained in traditional plots or stands.
We suggest that for ecohydrologic research to
be globally relevant it must embrace the full
spectrum of environments, including non-water
limited regions and wetland-rich regions. Over
the next two decades, ecohydrologic research will
explore more deeply the nature of transient system
evolution and elucidate characteristic timescales
of processes, such as those associated with
ecosystem aggradation and degradation. It will
move toward developing predictive capability that
builds from an understanding of processes along
spatial gradients, including adaptations of nutrient
cycling and plant hydraulics at wetland-upland
transitions. Moreover, as cyber-infrastructure
improves these activities will transcend individual
study sites by utilizing combinations of data sets

UCOWR Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education

 Integrated Ecohydrologic Research and Hydro-Informatics 17

not traditionally included in hydrologic analysis,

including networks of flux towers, component High

Canopy Transpiration or
ground-based measurements, multiple process
models, phenology networks, and remotely sensed

Photosynthesis
information. We elaborate on these ideas below
and offer suggestions for how advances in hydro-
informatics will help sustain these activities over
the next 20 years. To help focus the discussion
we use a running example, canopy transpiration,
which is a process that straddles the ecological and
hydrological divide. Low
Scarce Excessive
Challenge: Ecohydrology Beyond Available Soil Water
Water Scarce Environments
Figure 1. Conceptual response of vegetation processes
The emergence of ecohydrologic research
to available soil water. Both water scarcity and excess
is for hydrology the recognition that biological water represent limiting conditions for plants. The
processes play a large role in the cycling of water solid line represents equilibrium responses based on
(Eagleson 1982, 2002, Newman et al. 2006). short-term processes, while the gray zone represents a
The soil-vegetation-atmosphere continuum in range of responses reflecting long-term transients and
turn is an important component in climate. By memory.
tapping into sub-surface water sources, plant
drainage systems provide dramatically altered
roots help to maintain a flow of water from the
ecohydrologic gradients in limiting resources,
soil to the atmosphere well after surface soil
tending to alleviate water limitations in drier
moisture levels have drained or dried to the point
climates and potentially introduce water limitations
that they are too low to sustain evaporation. The
in more humid environments.
global relevance of such processes is clear. In
Vegetative responses to available soil water
humid regions, evapotranspiration (ET) typically
are conceptualized in Figure 1. Plants adapt to
consumes half the annual precipitation; this
conditions of water scarcity by growing deeper
proportion is much higher in semi-arid regions.
roots (e.g., Jackson et al. 1996), supporting lower
Plant canopy transpiration (EC) amounts to about
leaf areas (e.g., Grier and Running 1977), and
half of annual ET, but generally represents a much
reducing the vulnerability of their water conducting
higher proportion during periods when plants are
xylem to damage caused by air entry (e.g., Sperry
most active, during dry inter-storm periods, or in
et al. 1998). While these patterns are more easily
water-scarce environments. Thus, future research
observed under water stressed conditions, the
on land surface water-energy interactions and
mechanisms responsible for these adaptations give
hydroclimatic research will continue to depend on
plants competitive advantages in all environments.
insights into vegetative responses to environmental
For instance, excessive soil water requires that
drivers. However, such insights will not come
plants adapt shallow and sometimes above ground
from a focus on just water scarce environments,
roots for aeration, and nitrogen fixation for obtaining
since plants are adapted to and exert influence on
sufficient nitrogen in anaerobic environments. The
environments across a full spectrum of available
implication for obligate wetland species of a drop
soil water. For instance, feedbacks between
in the water table is a reduced ability to acquire
ecosystem and hydrological processes in wetland-
sufficient water to maintain EC (Ewers et al. 2007).
rich environments are poorly represented in current
Stomatal closure, in particular, occurs at mid-day
climate models, which lack specific mechanisms for
even in high levels of soil water because of limits
ground water dynamics and anaerobic processes.
in hydraulic transport from roots to leaves (Sperry
In urban and other human managed ecosystems,
et al. 1998, Tyree and Sperry 1989). Moreover,
significant subsidy of water and nutrients, and built
evidence of coordination between photosynthetic

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

18 Mackay and Band
activity and hydraulic conductance (Brodribb and
Field 2000, Brodribb et al. 2002) provides a clear
link between plant hydraulics and carbon uptake,
which ultimately feeds into vegetation growth and
long-term memory effects of biological processes
on water cycling. Feedbacks between these
biological responses to environmental drivers and
water cycling across the full spectrum of available
soil water has so far received little attention, but an
understanding of such processes will provide a vital
contribution to the problem of making hydrologic
predictions in ungaged basins (Sivapalan et al.
2003).
Much uncertainty remains in the parameter-
ization of stomatal conductance even in place-based
research (Mackay et al. 2003, Samanta et al. 2007),
and it currently cannot be conveniently estimated
as a spatial variable in large-scale models. Indeed,
in regional to global scale models it is accessed
from lookup tables keyed to remotely sensed
vegetation types (e.g., Dickenson et al. 1998,
Loveland and Belward 1997, Running et al. 1995,
Sellers et al. 1996). Recent studies have shown
that stomatal closure is proportional to the rate of
water loss for a wide variety of species (Addington
et al. 2004, Ewers et al. 2001, Ewers et al. 2005,
Ewers et al. 2007, Oren et al. 1999, Wullschleger
et al. 2002). We believe such insights will lead to
dynamic modeling of stomatal function at relevant
scales by linking the physiological understanding
with dynamic parameterization from satellites.
Theoretical work towards this includes linking the
complementary relationship between potential or
actual evapotranspiration and stomatal conductance
(e.g., Pettijohn and Salvucci 2006). Technical
advances with thermal remote sensing are now
exploiting the large-scale equilibrium between
the lower atmospheric moisture content and
evaporation rate (e.g., Hashimoto et al. 2008), and
multi-temporal remote sensing to take advantage
of soil thermal properties (e.g., Anderson et al.
2007). Furthermore, hyperspectral data from
sensors such as Hyperion have shown potential for
quantifying photosynthetic activity (Grace et al.
2007). These advances in technology coupled with
the predictive power of physiology-based models
will become common elements of watershed
hydrology, hydroclimatology, and water resource
sustainability research.
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Research Challenge: Modeling
Transience
The characteristic timescales of ecosystem
processes are affected by ground water dynamics,
ecosystem aggradation and degradation, soil
development, and climatic cycles. Short-term
processes include the diurnal adjustments of
stomatal conductance discussed above, daily or
longer-term adjustments to available soil water,
seasonal adjustments in plant growth, inter-annual
plant responses to disturbance and competition for
available resources, decadal adjustments to soil
carbon and nitrogen, and much longer-term changes
in soil or landform development. Characteristic
time responses for different processes need to be
understood if we are to make better predictions of
global climate change effects on water resources.
To address this problem Eagleson (1982, 2002)
hypothesized short-term canopy density adjust-
ments to minimize soil water stress, medium-term
preference for species that minimize consumption
of scarce soil water, and long-term adjustments in
soil properties that maximize the optimal canopy
density. In this view, plants were seen to optimize
their environment. Such an optimization view
lends itself to equilibrium modeling of which there
are many examples (e.g., Arris and Eagleson 1994,
Collins and Bras 2007, Eagleson 1982, Kergoat
1998, Nemani and Running 1989, Rodriguez-
Iturbe et al. 1999, van Wijk and Bouten 2001,
Zea-Cabrera et al. 2006). Optimization models
are appealing because they generally require only
a small amount of data, can be developed with
mathematical elegance, and can often generate
patterns that fit an intuitive understanding of
ecohydrologic systems. However, they generally
lack feedbacks between water, carbon, and nutrient
cycles such that, for instance, root growth is
enabled to sustain EC without concomitant carbon
and nutrients “costs” to the plant. One promising
development in the equilibrium approach is that
of D’Odorico et al. (2003) who incorporated
below ground nutrient responses to soil water.
However, their approach still did not couple below
and above ground processes, which would tend to
impart memory effects of the soil biogeochemistry
on the vegetation while at same time adjusting over
the long-term to the development of vegetation
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Integrated Ecohydrologic Research and Hydro-Informatics
(Mackay 2001).
Global climate change dictates that an
understanding of coupled hydrologic and ecological
processes requires long-term memory effects
involving transient system evolution in a broad
range of climates and biomes. Ecohydrologic
research on this front has been slower to develop,
primarily because of a lack of data. A few models
that feature long-term memory with plant-
hydrology feedbacks (e.g., Running and Gower
1991) have been incorporated into global (e.g.,
Foley et al. 1996, Running and Hunt 1993) and
watershed models (e.g., Band and Tague 2004,
Mackay and Band 1997, Vertessy et al. 1996) to
understand biogeographic responses of vegetation
to climatic and topographic controls (Kim and
Eltahir 2004) and to deal with vegetation succession
(Bond-Lamberty et al. 2005). A fundamental
problem with simulating transience is the paucity
of observational records that are sufficiently long
to show, for example, inter-annual anomalies.
Some long-term data sets do exist, such as the
Long-Term Ecological Research Station network,
flux tower networks, remote sensing records, and
phenology networks. However, with the exception
of remote sensing, most long-term observations
are limited in terms of spatial extent, such as single
stands (Dunn et al. 2007), and so their relevance to
regional or global scale is uncertain. Over the next
20 years, with sufficient funding, some of the short-
term data sets may become multi-decadal, which
should help. However, multi-site data will need
to be assimilated in future ecohydrologic studies
at regional and larger scales, and this is going to
require greater reliance on cyber-infrastructure
to more seamlessly integrate diverse data sets.
While “eco-hydro-informatics” is not necessarily
unique in its need for improved data and model
infrastructure, it does span types of data not
typically employed in hydrologic research, such as
below ground carbon and nutrient accounting. As
such, new enabling technologies are needed that
build in the intelligence to deal with “knowledge”
that extends beyond the traditional sphere of
hydrology. Moreover, maximum benefits will be
gained from this knowledge only once we are able
to explicitly deal with spatial continua of biological
and hydrological interactions.
Finally, much of the structure and function of
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
19
ecosystems is based on disturbance regime, and
the transient recovery from disturbances of varying
magnitudes. The effect of fire, harvest and numerous
other disturbance sources on watershed hydrology
are not adequately handled by ecohydrologic
analysis and models based on equilibrium
concepts. Direct coupling of disturbance regimes
into ecohydrologic analysis is critical.
Research Challenge: Spatial
Heterogeneity
Hydrological models incorporate parameterized
vegetation (e.g., Entekhabi and Eagleson 1989,
Wood et al. 1992), assume potential vegetation
(e.g., Dickinson 1984, Foley 1996, Pielke and
Avissar 1990, Sellers 1986), or model vegetation
dynamics (e.g., Foley et al. 2000, Mackay and
Band 1997, Vertessy et al. 1996). However, these
models rely on measurements made in stands.
Indeed, the traditional stand/gap approach to both
measuring and modeling fluxes in vegetative
communities has been to identify centers of
relatively homogeneous ecosystem types, make
flux measurements, and then apply mechanisms
learned in these plots to whole landscapes or larger
scales (e.g., Mackay et al. 2002). This unnecessary
simplification ignores changes in vegetation
function along gradients, promotes classification
of vegetation in terms of potential vegetation, and
ignores important feedbacks between the terrestrial
biosphere and climate, and between adjacent
vegetation patches connected along hydrologic
flow paths. Given present-day and future climate
and land use changes, it is conceptually appealing
to think of all terrestrial ecosystems as transitional
in space. There is also a growing recognition that
spatial variation of water storage and fluxes (e.g.,
Grayson et al. 1997, 2002, Seyfried and Wilcox
1995, Tromp-van Meerveld and McDonnell
2006) is critical to understanding hydrologic
path ways. Future ecohydrologic research must
embrace spatial variability and move beyond the
use of unrealistic vegetative boundaries. Recently,
Adelman et al. (2008) for a lodgepole pine-covered
slope in southern Wyoming, and Loranty et al.
(2008) for an aspen-wetland gradient in northern
Wisconsin, have shown that spatial variability of
tree transpiration changes with environmental
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20 Mackay and Band
Figure 2. Relativized variograms of tree transpiration
from among 120 trees in an aspen-wetland transition.
Based on a figure in Loranty et al. (2008).
drivers. Figure 2 illustrates the increase in spatial
heterogeneity as transpiration increases, a response
attributable to spatial variability in biological
responses. Such feedbacks between plants and
water flux rates suggest non-linearities that are lost
in the homogenization that occurs with traditional
center-of-stand methodology.
The patch-based approaches to ecohydrologic
systems also do not allow the investigation of
spatial dependency in the form of soil-vegetation
catenae along hydrologic flow paths. In more
humid environments, where lateral redistribution of
soil and ground water are significant, the behavior
of hill slope and catchment ecosystems may not
be generalized as the sum of discrete ecosystem
patch behavior because one-dimensional mass
balance approaches cannot capture emergent
patterns in ecosystem form and function, or in
runoff production. Lateral redistribution of soil
water creates heterogeneity in biogeochemical
and soil water effects on canopy physiology, and
generally tends to dampen temporal variability
of ecohydrologic flux while maintaining spatial
variability (e.g., Band et al. 1993). Future work
will incorporate and develop methods of estimating
the effects of heterogeneity through spatially
explicit simulation, as has already been done,
and by developing statistical-dynamic methods
for estimating growth and decay of hydrologic
heterogeneity (e.g., Albertson and Montaldo
2003).
This spatially explicit measurement and modeling
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approach needs to be employed in a variety of
ecosystems, and over longer time periods than are
possible with single projects. While such efforts are
laborious, new developments in automated sensor
networks using wireless technology should make
spatially explicit ecohydrologic measurements
feasible. Moreover, a true move to a mechanistic
understanding of ecohydrologic processes will
in the next few years embrace spatially explicit
genetics. With the sequencing of genetic code
for tree species (e.g., populous) and identification
of genes specifically responsible for controlling
plant water use (e.g., Cao et al. 2007) the next 20
years of ecohydrologic research will definitely be
dominated by molecular biological research and
will almost certainly require a genetic component.
Author Bios and Contact Information
D. Scott Mackay is an Associate Professor of Geography
at the State University of New York at Buffalo
(dsmackay@buffalo.edu or 716-645-0477). He received
his Ph.D. in 1997 from the University of Toronto. His
research concerns ecohydrological processes involving
water, energy, carbon, sediment, and nutrient fluxes in
forests, agricultural watersheds, and semi-arid shrub
systems. Funding for his work has been from NSF,
NASA, EPA, and DOE, and other sources.
Lawrence E. Band is the Voit Gilmore Distinguished
Professor of Geography and the Director of the Institute
for the Environment at the University of North Carolina,
Chapel Hill (lband@email.unc.edu). He received his
Ph.D. in 1983 from UCLA and has published more than
100 papers in the areas of hydrology, geomorphology,
urban and forest ecosystems. His work is currently
centered in the Baltimore and Coweeta Long Term
Ecological Research sites, and has been supported by
NSF, EPA, NOAA, USDA-Forest Service and other
agencies.
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regional applications II. Dynamic carbon allocation
and nitrogen budgets. Tree Physiology 9: 147-160.
Running, Steven. W. and E. R. Hunt, Jr. 1993.
Generalization of a forest ecosystem process
model for other biomes, BIOME-BGC, and an
application for global scale models. Pages 141-158
in James R. Ehleringer and C.B. Field (eds.) Scaling
Physiological Processes: Leaf to Globe, Academic
Press: San Diego, CA.
Running, S. W., T. R. Loveland, L. L. Pierce, R. R.
Nemani, and E. R. Hunt, Jr. 1995. A remote sensing
based vegetation classification for global land cover
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Samanta, S., D. S. Mackay, M. Clayton, E. L. Kruger,
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model. Water Resources Research 43: W04424,
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Sellers P. J., S. O. Los, C. J. Tucker, C. O. Justice, D.
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A. Dazlich, G. J. Collatz, and D. A. Randall. 1996.
A revised land surface parameterization (SiB2) for
atmospheric GCMs. Part II: The generation of global
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A simple biosphere model (SiB) for use within
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the nature of spatial variability: Field examples
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H. Karambiri, V. Lakshmi, X. Liang, J. J. McDonnell,
E. M. Mendiondo, P. E. O’Connell, T. Oki, J. W.
Pomeroy, D. Schertzer, S. Uhlenbrook, and E. Zehe.
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24 Mackay and Band

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 25

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 25-27, August 2009

Applying Geographic Information Techniques to Study

Water Resources for the Next 20 Years
Luoheng Han
Department of Geography, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

F
or the next twenty years, water availability,
water quality, and, thus, water conservation
are arguably among the primary challenges
that every country in the world will face.
Monitoring water quality and identifying the
location and magnitude of existing and potential
pollution sources and impacts will continue to
be the important activities to ensure an adequate
supply of earth’s most precious natural resource.
Geographic information techniques, such as remote
sensing and Geographic Information Systems
(GIS), will continue to be some of the effective
tools for collecting and analyzing the data for water
quality and quantity.
Documented water-related attributes that can
be remotely measured include surface area, water
quality, bathymetry, surface temperature, snow and
ice mapping, snow and ice to water calculation,
cloud cover, precipitation and water vapor (Jensen
2007). In measuring these parameters, remote
sensing will continue to be one of most appealing
fields of study and instrumentation to resource
managers because it provides the simultaneous
overview for a large region, which is unmatched
by in situ measurement. The spatial component is
always inherent in remote sensing processes. In
addition, the pace and ease of data collection through
remote sensing has become nearly a prerequisite
to compiling the multitemporal datasets required
for multi-scale and multidimensional biophysical
change detection.
Remote sensing will continue to be useful in
monitoring water quality. While the optically
active water constituents are measurable with
remote sensing, other water parameters may still be
indirectly detected. Chlorophyll a, due to its unique
absorption characteristics in the visible spectrum,
will be the prime test constraint. Inorganic
suspended sediment concentration is another water
quality indicator where remote sensing technology
can be applied.
Several satellite sensing systems were specifically
designed for monitoring water quality chlorophyll
a in ocean water, such as Coastal Zone Color
Scanner (1978-1986) and the Sea-viewing Wide
Field of View Sensor (SeaWiFS). They are mostly
useful for Case I waters (deep ocean). Although
the spectral resolution is not ideal, Landsat TM/
ETM+ data have proven to be adequately useful
for assessing estuarine systems because they are
economical, routinely available, and archived. For
example, chlorophyll a concentration, an indicator
of the abundance of algae in water was mapped
over Pensacola Bay, Florida using Landsat 7 ETM+
imagery (Figure 1).
In 2005 NASA was instructed to acquire a single
Landsat data continuity mission in the form of a
free-flyer spacecraft to insure that Landsat TM/
ETM+ data will be the available for the near future.
Currently, NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS)
program is in operation, which consists of a series
of satellites that observe our planet earth.
While multispectral sensing systems may still be
available over the next twenty years, hyperspectral
sensors will become more and more important
sources for remote sensing data. With more than
one hundred spectral bands, it is expected that
hyperspectral sensors will establish some sort of
“spectral fingerprint” for certain types of organic
and inorganic substances in the water. Therefore,
detecting fine physical and biochemical changes
in water quality may become formulaic. Another
trend in remote sensing technology development
may be worth noting. Bathymetric information

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

26
Kilometers
0.93 - 3.36
3.37 - 5.90
5.91 - 8.99
9.00 - 12.83
12.84 - 17.99
18.00 - 24.92
Figure 1. Chlorophyll a concentration map of Pensa-
cola Bay, FL (May 2002) (after Han and Jordan 2005)
will be accurately derived using LIDAR (Light
Detection and Ranging), a remote sensor that
sends a laser beam out and measures the time and
intensity of the returned laser light (Jenson 2007).
Finally, inland water and sea surface temperatures
may mostly come from thermal remote sensing
techniques.
In the next twenty years, remote sensing data,
such as satellite imagery, will become more
accessible to the public through such venues as
wireless internet for hand-helds, Personal Digital
Assistants (PDAs), and laptops. Eventually, the
real-time water quality information for a given
location may be available, and such changes should
spur diverse research opportunities, especially in
modeling global environmental change.
As a spatial analysis tool, GIS has been
successfully applied in almost all areas where
spatial information has been collected (Longley
at al. 2005). Water availability, water quality, and
water conservation have been studied and managed
with GIS over the past two decades and will be
more focused during the next twenty years. GIS
will be widely applied for:
• Catchment collection for rainwater harvesting;
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Han
• Drought assessment;
• Flood assessment;
• Ground and surface water potential zoning;
• Ground water pollution potential;
• Ground water resource exploration and
management and rooftop;
• Identification and management of drinking
water potentials;
• Modeling nutrients and sediment loadings
(TMDL assessment);
• Network analysis of surface water;
• Non-point source assessment and prediction;
• Watershed management and irrigation
network planning.
In particular, GIS will continue to show its
usefulness and effectiveness in storing, managing,
and analyzing water resource data. GIS can be
used to delineate, illustrate, and analyze hydrologic
systems, and researchers will be able to evaluate
spatial and temporal responses of hydrologic
systems to natural and anthropogenic impacts
using GIS. GIS will become the platform for many
more hydrological models including analytical
hydrologic models, process-based spatial analysis
models, and others. Most of the water quality models
will be the ones that integrate remote sensing and
GIS. The current nonpoint-source water quality
models (e.g., AGNPS and SWAT) have already
utilized the land use and land cover information
that is derived from the latest remote sensing data.
The complete and seamless integration of real-
time georeferenced sensors and earth-observation
technology will become available via Wi-Fi and
internet technologies. Virtual 3-D and 4-D water
quality information systems, a special type of GIS,
may be available for citizens, giving more minds
the opportunities to contemplate more creative
research veins and applications.As water resource
will arguably be one of the deciding factors for the
world’s economy, monitoring and managing water
will be a major task for resource researchers and
managers. It is imperative to use the available
geographic information techniques including
remote sensing and GIS as they are advancing at
an unprecedented pace with regard to functionality
and interoperability.
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Applying Geographic Information Techniques to Study Water Resources 27

Author Bio and Contact Information

Luoheng Han is professor of geography and associate
dean for the College of Arts and Sciences at the
University of Alabama. He received his Ph.D. in
geography from The University of Nebraska-Lincoln in
1994. He was named a College of Arts and Sciences
Leadership Board Faculty Fellow (2004-2007) in 2004.
His research interest is remote sensing of the quality
of coastal and inland waters. His research has been
published in International Journal of Remote Sensing,
Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing,
Remote Sensing of Environment, and others. He can be
contacted at lhan@as.ua.edu.

References
Han, L. and K. Jordan. 2005. Measuring algal
chlorophyll concentration in Pensacola Bay, Florida
using Landsat ETM+ data. International Journal of
Remote Sensing 26(23): 5245-5254.

Jensen, J. R. 2007. Remote Sensing of the Environment,

An Earth Resource Perspective, 2nd. Edition, (Upper
Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Longley, P. A., M. F. Goodchild, D. J. Maguire, and D.

W. Rhind. 2005. Geographic Information Systems
and Science, 2nd. Edition, Chichester, West Sussex,
Endgland: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

28

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 28-35, August 2009

Integration of Water Data for Decision-Making and Research

R. Rajagopal
Professor, Department of Geography, The University of Iowa

..... A society that has great skills in fact-gathering
may possess only a weak ability to make sense
of the larger patterns of meanings where parts fit
into wholes. Description, anecdotal knowledge,
and batteries of statistics are no substitute for
synthesis (Goulet 1991).
To understand such questions of diversity in
attributes and uncertainty of measurements, global,
federal, state and local governments have invested
billions of dollars for the collection, storage,
and maintenance of water quantity and quality,

A
s consumers, citizens, and professionals,
we are constantly faced with questions
such as: How much water is available
in different parts of the country under shifting
demographic and land use conditions? What
pollutants are found in the nation’s waters? Where
in the nation are these different pollutants found,
and at what concentrations? How many people are
exposed to these pollutants? What are the costs
and benefits of different control technologies and
corrective actions? How should one incorporate
such factors in the process of resource allocation?
What do the experts say? What are some of the
social and political ramifications of deferring or
not deferring to expert judgments on these issues
in a democratic society? These are perennial
questions and will no doubt play an important role
in anyone’s list of water resource decision-making
and research priorities over the next two decades.
Attributes of water such as rainfall, runoff, storage
levels, contaminants, health effects, voting records,
funding levels, and public outrage are diverse
in the context of physical, chemical biological,
economic, perceptual, and other characteristics
and are measured in different units at various
scales. Such measurements of diverse attributes
also vary over space and time. The instruments that
are used to measure such attributes are also subject
to variation and uncertainty. So, the process of
integration and synthesis of diverse water-related
attributes and their uncertain measurements to
meet end-objectives is quite complicated.
exposure, toxicity, and public perception data on
an on-going basis. Information derived from such
data influences regulatory and policy decisions that
cost taxpayers further tens of billions of dollars
annually for water-related decisions (Carlin et
al. 1992, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
2009, U.S. Geological Survey 2009). Despite
these enormous investments, the integrated use
of data in research and the policy‑making process
has been limited. Recognizing the importance of
this subject, the United Nations Statistics Division
(Vardon and Martinez 2009) hosted a session on
“Data Integration and Dissemination: From Data to
Information” at the recent 5th World Water Forum,
held in March 2009, in Istanbul, Turkey.
A comprehensive review of water resources
literature, laws, budgets, and analyses of selected
data sets reveal the central role played by the twin
factors of diversity of attributes and uncertainty
in measurements in our understanding of many
water issues (Brands and Rajagopal 2008 a, b,
c, Rajagopal et al. 1992b). The key findings of
many recent water resources research analyses
can be summed up as managing diversity in a
world of uncertainty. Enabling our institutions to
develop a research infrastructure to manage water
laws, science, and technology so as to effectively
utilize and combine the diversity of attributes and
uncertainty in their measurements at different
scales for the protection and management of water
resources will be a major challenge in the next two
decades (Colaceci et al. 2008, Kumar and Singh
2005, Loucks et al. 2006, Rejman 2007, Vardon

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 Integration of Water Data for Decision-Making and Research
and Martinez 2009).
A set of observations and recommendations
highlighting priorities in water decision-making
and research for the next two decades are offered
under the sections of scientific innovations and
institutional reforms. Although these sections and
subsections within them are organized sequentially,
their contents overlap and therefore should be read
and comprehended as a whole.
Scientific Innovations
Quantity: In the study of water budgets, nature
(especially extreme storm events) contributes to
significant variability in rainfall, evaporation,
surface runoff, and other related attributes.
Additional uncertainties are introduced by
measurement technologies and sampling designs
(Bradley et al. 2002, Wallis et al. 1991). Further,
the variability in water demand due to changing
land use, irrigation withdrawals, and reservoir
operations also cause uncertainty in estimates.
Therefore, studies that integrate such varying
attributes of water, land use, land cover change, and
human-engineered structures and their attendant
processes at various spatial (global, regional, and
local) and temporal (yearly, monthly, daily, hourly,
and at seconds) scales would be of much value
(National Research Council 2005, Rajagopal et
al. 1992b, Rejman 2007, Yatheendradas 2008).
In particular, the development of methods for the
prediction of extreme events, at the temporal scale
of one day to a few months should be promoted.
Research on uncertainty related to floods and
droughts at microscales of space and time for
vulnerable zones should receive high priority.
Monitoring: Many state, national, and international
organizations routinely collect water data for use
in management, planning, research, and regulatory
decisions (Portney 1988, Rajagopal 1987, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency 1988, 2008,
U.S. Geological Survey 2009, Vardon and
Martinez 2009). For a number of valid reasons,
the scope and content of data collected under
different programs have varied significantly. In
particular, they differ in terms of the objectives
of enabling legislation (compliance, ambient,
enforcement, etc.), the number and diversity of
parameters measured, the frequency and timing
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
29
of measurements, and the quality and locational
specificity of those measurements. Since the
objectives of individual monitoring programs
have varied considerably, they can all benefit by
considering a set of fundamental questions in their
design process: Why monitor? What to monitor?
Where to monitor? How to monitor? and when and
how often to monitor? The quality of the design
is often reflected by our ability to provide precise
answers or estimates for these types of questions.
It is in this context that the integration of existing
data bases can play a major role by providing
initial estimates for design specifications.
Numerous authors have argued that water
data in many large data sets are biased, have
limited space‑time representation, and are not
well documented. These data sets therefore have
limited utility in problem settings other than the
one for which they were collected. There is an
urgent need to catalog various methods useful in
the analysis of found, archived, or encountered
data for the purposes of estimation and drawing
inferences. This field is very much like forensic
science ‑ it is too late to redesign someone else’s
data collection program. What is needed is a set of
methods to salvage insights from existing data sets,
however biased, imprecise, or unstructured they
may be. A promising area for further research is to
explore questions related to the making of unbiased
inferences from the use of biased data sets.
Several other data quality‑related issues must
be considered in design. These issues include the
treatment of outliers in aggregation and estimation,
uncertainty and error propagation in estimation,
optimization of monitoring decisions, the role of
classification schemes and ecoregions in survey
design and reporting systems, error propagation in
map overlays, and the robustness of extrapolations
in 3D visualization in spatial analysis and
characterization. An extensive body of literature
exists that covers the above and other design issues
in quality of measurements such as: precision,
bias, and accuracy; statistical control of quality;
calibration of instruments and methods; role and
use of reference materials; traceability of results;
field and laboratory screening; and field sampling
of physical, chemical, biological, and resource
measurements (Center for Sustainable Watersheds
2008, National Water Quality Monitoring
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30 Rajagopal
Council 2009, Northeast Midwest Institute 2008,
Statistics Canada 2008, Texas State Soil and Water
Conservation Board 2009, U.S. Department of
Agriculture 2009). All the organizations cited
above are involved in one form or another in
developing appropriate methods and procedures
to deal with data quality and related issues. In
particular, research to develop a variety of user-
friendly indices based on the combination of water
monitoring data with those from other realms
such as socio-economics, health, and demography
should receive high priority.
Quality and Complexity: Water quality problems
are complex because a multitude of factors (natural
and anthropogenic – objective and subjective)
affect them and it is extremely difficult to identify
and isolate a set of cause‑effect relationships
linking particular factors to specific indicators of
water quality. The sources of water contamination
are numerous. Due to the synergistic nature
of the water environment and the enormity of
information content, it is almost impossible to study
simultaneously the several processes affecting water
quality at any instant. Therefore, water quality
issues of regional and national scales do not easily
lend themselves for effective analysis through the
hydrodynamic methods of fate and transport based
on 10 meter to 1000 meter spatial and 1 hour to 1
month temporal resolutions. Because of enormous
spatial and temporal variability and extensive data
requirements, we can only afford such models
for field and farm level applications within a
growing season or remediation activities at a single
hazardous waste site. On the other hand, methods
based on field evidence (empirical data) from
regional and national networks at coarser spatial and
temporal scales provide promising potentials for
use in the study of regional and national problems
(Rajagopal 1987, U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency 1988, Vardon and Martinez 2009). The
topics of significant research import are the quality
of questions that we pose, the ability to integrate
diverse water‑related data bases so as to provide
answers to such questions, and the relationship of
such questions and answers to societal decisions.
The research agenda over the next two decades
should be driven by the development of a variety of
templates linking data to information to practical
questions faced by water resource decision makers
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on the ground.
Science for Policy: Water quantity and quality
problems, and the public’s perception of water‑borne
risk, are complex and interwoven. The presence of
some contaminants in water may be immediately
evident, while others, being tasteless, odorless,
and colorless, may be consumed for years before
detection. In addition to this problem of detection,
our ability to study and understand the health
effects of contaminants is further complicated
by the presence of varying concentrations and
combinations of contaminants in the water, and the
multiple pathways of food, water, and air by which
they enter our bodies. In this regard, toxicological
and epidemiological methods, to some extent, help
determine safe or acceptable levels of chemicals in
food, water, and air.
A major step in dealing with complex water
resources problems is to understand the processes
governing variability through the diverse attributes
of many disciplines. Many promising examples
linking the quality and quantity of water in ambient,
drinking water, landfill, and waste sites to food
and the environment can be found in Brands and
Rajagopal 2008 a, b, c, Kumar and Sing 2005, and
Sophocleous 2004. Such an understanding will
enable the reduction of uncertainty that in turn will
provide insights for cost‑effective management
and policy actions for the protection of fresh water
resources. It is well known that that the variability
in occurrence of contaminants in ground water can
be explained by factors such as regions, sampling
type, chlorination practice, and aquifer sources.
Knowledge of regional variations in pesticide
application, and the effects of factors such as
pesticide properties, hydrogeology and weather
patterns have been shown to be of much help in
focusing on areas where contamination is likely to
occur. Prior research (Brands and Rajagopal 2008
a, b, c) has shown that only a few contaminants are
of concern at most places, and the occurrence of
those can be explained in the context of the locale
(geographical intelligence). Further research to
translate such insights and knowledge based on
geographical, hydrogeological, and chemical
observations in the development of cost-effective
monitoring strategies and regulatory programs
for the protection of fresh water resources of the
United States should be of high priority over the
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Integration of Water Data for Decision-Making and Research
next two decades.
Several innovative screening methods and
diagnostic tools such as sequential analysis and
compositing for the determination of the extent
to which each sample should be analyzed have
been developed (Emerson and Rajagopal 2003,
Kuchibhatla and Rajagopal 1995, Natarajan and
Rajagopal 1994, Rajagopal and Williams 1989,
Rajagopal 1990, Rajagopal and Li 1991). They
will contribute considerably to the reduction of
uncertainty and error in identifying contamination
problems, and in reducing monitoring costs by
several hundred million dollars. At the same time
these diagnostic tools will provide more protection
per monitoring dollar. Such savings could be
redirected toward the much needed problems of
corrective actions. In conclusion, the science of
monitoring should not blindly recommend the
removal of contaminants from Safe Drinking
Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery
Act, or Comprehensive Environmental Response,
Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA)
regulations to reduce cost, nor should it recommend
the addition of hundreds of contaminants to the
list under the guise of protecting public health.
Scientific efforts should help develop a monitoring
strategy based on knowledge about the locales
(geographic intelligence). It should help with
the process of organizing and using information
intelligently, asking good questions in the right
order, and developing thinking skills (intelligence
revolution).
Within the present institutional and legal milieu,
the agencies and the public are not positioned to fully
benefit from the vast resources that are invested in
collecting water and other environmental data due
to two primary reasons:
1. Almost all such data are the result of a
progression of legislative mandates or agency
missions, each focused on a single issue or a
set of compounds. For example, data gathered
by thousands of U.S. water supplies under
the Safe Drinking Water Act are checked for
compliance at individual locales and specific
times but never mapped and correlated with
other measurements at regional and national
scales over a longer time horizon. Such
approaches meet the immediate compliance
needs of an agency with little orientation
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
31
toward understanding problems in multiple
contexts,
2. Institutional barriers, restrictive disciplinary
and legal views, and technical incompatibilities
have made the interpretation, integration,
and synthesis of such data extremely difficult
(Patel and Sethi 2007, Rajagopal et al. 1992a,
Zimmerman 2007).
Institutional Reforms
Environmental problems are well known for
their intractability, and problems of fresh water are
no exception. Full understanding of the hydrologic
cycle, level and movement of contaminants
in water and their potential health effects may
take many decades. Yet, citizens need to know
today the safety of a particular water supply and
policy‑makers need to know the availability and
the quality of the water now, what can be expected
in the future, and what can be done. At present,
our institutions do not effectively synthesize
the information contained in numerous existing
data bases and do not provide such syntheses to
citizens, elected officials, and experts in a timely
and useful manner. What is needed is a mechanism
for managing and synthesizing diverse data within
a context of uncertainty for fresh water protection
policies. For example, citizens and elected officials
are not expecting precise answers to all water-
related questions, but answers similar to insurance
rate tables based on age, gender, and behavior;
or impending weather impacts (thunderstorm,
tornado, and hurricane warnings) and advice based
on date, time, and location of impending extreme
events and possible specific courses of action.
Institutional Change
To address many planning, public health, policy
and regulatory questions related to the freshwater
environment of the United States, it is essential
that a National Commission on Fresh Water be
organized and set in motion as soon as possible.
The Commission will provide the much needed
institutional capability for synthesizing a multitude
of data sources to provide timely information
and analysis for decision‑making, management,
planning, enforcement, policy, and regulation
dealing with fresh water protection issues. It was
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32 Rajagopal
clearly demonstrated that under the present system
of governance with many independent federal and
state agencies and a myriad of laws, such a capability
doesn’t exist. The proposed Commission will not
spring into existence by itself. Over the next two
decades, the Commission must be consciously
designed, developed, nurtured, evaluated, and
modified – with the full participation of state and
federal elected representatives, agency officials,
academics, non‑profit organizations, public
citizens, and private sector participants.
The Commission should have the following
responsibilities:
1. Actively promote the development of
institutional capabilities. In particular,
it should enable regulatory, research,
management, and academic communities to
rapidly access, process, analyze, and use data
from multiple sources for the study, analysis,
and protection of fresh water.
2. Produce a biannual report describing the
quality of fresh water in the U.S. with specific
action plans for protecting and enhancing
the quality of fresh water resources. The
Commission should not duplicate similar
reports on the nation’s water quantity and
selected water quality parameters that are
routinely produced by the U. S. Geological
Survey, and the U. S. Environmental
Protection Agency. Such reports will serve
a useful role by keeping the nation’s citizens
and elected officials informed about the status
of water quality conditions in their districts,
regions, states, and the nation.
3. Develop and disseminate a variety of templates
and case studies (recipes) of carefully
planned, quality assured, and integrated data
from diverse sources for use in managerial,
planning, regulatory, and administrative
reforms. Templates that already exist for
regional and national assessments, forecasting,
site planning, impact assessments, resource
allocation and research designs should be
adapted, developed, and disseminated within
the water resources community.
4. Prepare custom‑made briefing reports on a
variety of topics of current concern to the
public, elected officials, interest groups, and
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private organizations. Such reports should
be based on all the data relevant to the topic
of concern, available to the Commission.
It should provide analyses of spatial and
temporal patterns, statistical tabulations,
interpretations, potential population expo-
sures, plausible hypotheses, and a section
describing the limitations based on the
quality of available data. Almost every major
office of the federal and state government
can benefit by seeking custom‑made briefing
reports on a topic of their current concern.
In short, this service can be viewed as the
provision of fresh water intelligence based on
the synthetic processing and interpretation of
existing data.
5. Acquire data on water from a variety of
public and private sources and maintain a
data library. It should be able to prepare
customized data‑products (extractions from
the available library) for a variety of users.
Many researchers of government and
state‑sponsored projects, contractors, public
interest organizations, and foundations
can benefit immensely from this activity.
Such a service will lead to enormous dollar
savings by utilizing existing data, avoiding
the collection of data that already exist, and
providing user-friendly integration services
to water professionals. This service alone
would be of enormous value to the nation.
Based on available data sets and inquiries
for custom‑made tapes and briefing reports,
the Commission will be able to identify
gaps in existing data gathering efforts of
agencies. It will be able to identify areas of
potential linkages for the combined use of
water quality and quantity, socioeconomic,
land‑use, population, public health, and
perception data.
6. The Commission should promote the
development of management information
processing and synthesizing capability at
the state level through regularly organized
workshops describing the capabilities and
services available at the Commission.
7. The Commission should have a funding
of about $ 20 million per year with a staff
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Integration of Water Data for Decision-Making and Research
of about 100 professionals drawn from
various existing agencies such as the U. S.
Environmental Protection Agency, U. S.
Geological Survey, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, U. S. Army
Corps of Engineers, and Agency for Toxic
Substances and Registry.
Limitations of the Commission
The Commission should not:
1. Directly participate in the collection of any
new data;
2. Directly participate in the conduct of any
basic environmental research; or
3. Be directly involved in the development
of any new data bases, new software, or
new analytical methods, except for the
development of minor integrative tools
necessary for implementing the proposed
missions.
Proposals similar to the above Commission for
a National Center for Environmental Information
and/or a National Bureau of Environmental
Statistics were made by me and a few others
over the last two decades. Such proposals have
languished in Congress and the Administration
and have not been implemented due to so-called
political gridlock. Again, my observations echo
the sentiment that “War is too important to be
left to the generals and government too vital to
be left to politicians” (Goulet 1991). In a similar
vein, I conclude that fresh water protection is too
important to be left to politicians or a specialized
but highly fragmented bureaucracy. If a National
Commission on Fresh Water with the above stated
goals cannot be initiated within a period of next 3-5
years with government sponsorship, I recommend
that concerned citizens and professionals take
the trouble to get better informed and organize
such a Commission with the support of private
foundations and non-profit organizations. It is
extremely important to get such a Commission
organized so that many of the previously stated
research agenda on water for the next 20 years can
materialize.
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
33
Acknowledgments
The content of this paper is the result of research
and cooperative grant activities sponsored by many
government, private, and university entities over
the last 25 years to the author and his colleagues
and students at the University of Iowa. The findings
and recommendations offered here are the authors’
own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the
sponsoring/supporting organizations; therefore no
official endorsement should be inferred on their
part. We sincerely appreciate several valuable
comments provided by the anonymous reviewers
to the journal.
Author Bio and Contact Information
R. Rajagopal is a professor in geography at the
University of Iowa. His teaching/research interests are
in water quality monitoring and public policy. He has
supervised to completion the theses/dissertations of over
60 master’s and Ph.D. students. He has organized over
100 workshops/seminars on environmental science,
technology, and policy; ground water protection;
information systems; and innovation to over 3,000 people
in academe, government, non-profits and industry. He
is the founding editor of the journal “Environmental
Practice” (formerly “The Environmental Professional”)
published by the Oxford University Press. He received a
Ph.D. in Environmental Management Systems from the
University of Michigan in 1974. He can be contacted at
r-rajagopal@uiowa.edu.
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UCOWR
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Toxic Emissions from Landfills Using Sequential
Screening, Computers, Environment, and Urban
Systems 28(2004): 265-284.
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Quest for Wisdom. Research and Exploration 7(2):
131‑132.
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316-330.
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Food and Water Policy Making: Is There a Need
for Rethinking? Water Resources Management. 19:
759–789.
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UCOWR
Northeast Midwest Institute. 2008. http://www.nemw.org/
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Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

36

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 36-41, August 2009

Water for Agriculture:

Global Change and Geographic Perspectives on
Research Challenges for the Future
John Harrington, Jr.
Department of Geography, Kansas State University, Manhattan

I
n writing about the future of humanity on
Earth, E. O. Wilson (2002) used the metaphor
of a “bottleneck” to characterize the current
and forthcoming period of tremendous human
demand on planetary resources. The combination
of continuing growth in global population, the
associated demand for food and fiber, and a
relatively fixed water resource base results in a
number of grand challenges that will be part of
the hydro-social research landscape for the next
20 years (Graedel et al. 2001, Myers et al. 2007,
Robertson and Swinton 2005). Complexity of these
coupled human-environment problems (Liu et al.
2007) and uncertainty in human understanding and
responses to our transition into and through the
bottleneck provide many opportunities for scholars
to contribute relevant information on our adapting
journey toward planetary sustainability (Frieman
et al. 1999).
Research questions from earth system science,
human-environment, and spatial perspectives
that address uncertainties regarding future water
availability, water quality, and how we will make
use of water resources, are needed to help the world
community find a way to support our growing
planetary population. In the 2001 Envisioning
report, the Water Science and Technology Board
of the National Academies of Sciences identified
43 research issues (Table 1) among the three broad
categories of water availability, water use, and
water institutions, with some issues specific to
the agricultural enterprise (Vaux, Jr. et al. 2001).
A subsequent National Academies of Sciences
assessment, discussing the role of research in
addressing national water problems, indicated
that research designs “should explicitly reflect the
four themes of interdisciplinarity, broad systems
context, uncertainty, and adaptation” (Vaux, Jr. et
al. 2004: 6).
Recognizing that humans are greatly modifying
the global water system the Global Environmental
Change Programmes established an international
effort that 1) informs policy but is driven by
science, 2) is global in scope, 3) is interdisciplinary
and integrative, and 4) addresses multiple time
scales (Vörösmarty et al. 2004). The three framing
questions regarding the global water system
address the relative size of both anthropogenic and
environmental changes, linkages and feedbacks
that materialize due to changes in the global
water system, and resilience and adaptability of
management strategies. An ecosystem services
approach to address fresh water resource issues
provided a perspective for suggesting twelve
priorities for updating water policies for the 21st
Century (Postel 2005). In addition, Wilbanks and
Kates (1998) have indicated that investigation of
the local expressions of global change is a key
contribution that geographers can make. This
paper provides an articulation of research priorities
that address water and agriculture for the next two
decades, based primarily on a perspective that
is informed by aspects of human dimensions of
global change and geographic thought.
Water for Agriculture on a Changing
Planet
Agriculture is by far the largest category of human
use of available water resources. The 3,500 cubic
kilometers of fresh water flows used by agriculture

UCOWR Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education

 Water for Agriculture: Research Challenges for the Future 37

Table 1. Research issues identified in the 2001 ‘Envisioning’ report from the US National Academies of Science
(Vaux, Jr. et al. 2001).
Water Availability
• Develop new and innovative supply-enhancing technologies
• Improve existing supply-enhancing technologies such as wastewater treatment, desalting, and groundwater banking
• Increase safety of wastewater treated for reuse as drinking water
• Develop innovative techniques for preventing pollution
• Understand physical, chemical, and microbial contaminant fate and transport
• Control nonpoint source pollution
• Understand impact of land-use changes and best management practices on pollutant loading to waters
• Understand impact of contaminants on ecosystem services, biotic indices, and higher organisms
• Understand assimilation capacity of the environment and time course of recovery following contamination
• Improve integrity of drinking water distribution systems
• Improve scientific bases for risk assessment and risk management with regard to water quality
• Understand national hydrologic measurement needs and develop a program that will provide these measurements
• Develop new techniques for measuring water flows and water quality, including remote sensing and in situ
techniques
• Develop data collection and distribution in near real time for improved forecasting and water resources operations
• Improve forecasting the hydrologic cycle over a range of time scales and on a regional basis
• Understand and predict the frequency and cause of severe weather (floods and droughts)
• Understand recent increases in damage from floods and droughts
• Understand global change and its hydrologic impacts
Water Use
• Understand determinants of water use in the agricultural, domestic, commercial, public, and industrial sectors
• Understand relationship of agricultural water use to climate, crop type, and water application rates
• Develop improved crops for more efficient water use and optimize the economic return for the water used
• Develop improved crop varieties for use in dryland agriculture
• Understand water-related aspects of the sustainability of irrigated agriculture
• Understand behavior of aquatic ecosystems in a broad, systematic context, including their water requirements
• Enhance and restore species diversity in aquatic ecosystems
• Improve manipulation of water-quality parameters to maintain and enhance aquatic habitats
• Understand interrelationship between aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems to support watershed management.
Water Institutions
• Develop legal regimes that promote ground water management and conjunctive use of surface and ground water
• Understand issues related to the governance of water where it has common pool and public good attributes
• Understand uncertainties attending to Native American water rights and other federal reserved rights
• Improve equity in existing water management laws
• Conduct comparative studies of water laws and institutions
• Develop adaptive management
• Develop new methods for estimating the value of non-marketed attributes of water resources
• Understand use of economic institutions to protect common pool and pure public good values related to
water resources
• Develop efficient markets and market-like arrangements for water
• Understand role of prices, pricing structures, and the price elasticity of water demand
• Understand role of the private sector in achieving efficient provision of water and waste water services
• Understand key factors that affect water-related risk communication and decision processes
• Understand user-organized institutions for water distribution, such as cooperatives, special districts, and
mutual companies
• Develop different processes for obtaining stakeholder input in forming water policies and plans
• Understand cultural and ethical factors associated with water use
• Conduct ex post research to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of past water policies and projects

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

38 Harrington
represent 70 percent of global water withdrawals for
human use each year (Holdren 2008). According
to Postel and Vickers (2004), withdrawals of fresh
water flows for agriculture can reach 90 percent
in many developing countries. Agriculture is by
far the largest consumer of available fresh water;
it is estimated that water consumed in agricultural
activities exceeds 90 percent globally (Food and
Agricultural Organization 2002). Unfortunately,
temporal and spatial variations in the climatically-
driven delivery of water and the current status of
the human response to these characteristics of the
hydrologic cycle have 2.4 billion people living in
“highly water-stressed areas” (Oki and Kanae 2006:
1069). According to Jury and Vaux, Jr. (2005:
15715), agricultural water use is not sustainable
in many areas, “production may soon be limited
by water availability,” and market forces will
likely result in a reallocation of water away from
agricultural uses.
Humans now dominate Earth system functioning
and global change. We have entered a new geologic
epoch, the Anthropocene (Crutzen and Stoermer
2000, Zalasiewicz et al. 2008). And Steffan et
al. (2004) suggest that we have domesticated the
planet. Human domination of Earth ecosystems
(Vitousek et al. 1997) is driven by the need for
land to produce the food and fiber consumed by
6.7 billion inhabitants. “Together, cropland and
pastures have become one of the largest terrestrial
biomes on the planet, rivaling forest cover in extent
and occupying ~ 40% of the land surface” (Foley
et al. 2005). Human population grew rapidly
during the 2nd half of the 20th Century and a Green
Revolution in food provision, which resulted from
agricultural intensification, meant that the volume
of food available was able to keep pace with
growing human demand. Increased production per
hectare was a result of a mix of activities, including
new crop varieties, irrigation, synthetic fertilizer,
herbicides and pesticides, increased mechanization,
and new and better use of information.
As our global population and food demand
– both total and, potentially, per capita – continue
to grow during the next two decades, there will be
a significant need for additional food provision.
That need for more calories and protein will
require both more water and improved efficiency
in agricultural water use. While forecasts vary,
UCOWR
there are likely to be eight billion human residents
sometime in the third decade of this century. This
increase in global population is forecast to occur
mostly in the less-wealthy countries with fewer
financial and/or natural resources. It has been
suggested that we have “progressed” into a no
analog world (Mily et al. 2008); a world that has
never experienced the types, rates, magnitudes,
and scales of environmental change that the planet
is currently experiencing.
There is considerable concern about water
scarcity and water and food security issues.
Rosegrant et al. (2003) identify a formidable
challenge in meeting the demand for the world’s
increasingly scarce water supply and suggest that
rainfed agriculture is key to meeting future needs
for sustainable development of water and food.
Postel (2000) noted that we are entering an era of
water scarcity and proposed an effort to double
productivity from water resources and reserve water
for ecosystems; she suggested that accomplishing
these goals will be “one of the most difficult and
important challenges of the 21st century” (Postel
2000: 946). According to Tilman et al. (2001:
284), “If global population stabilizes at 8.5 to 10
billion people, the next 50 years may be the final
episode of rapid global agricultural expansion.”
By extending the linear trends from the second half
of the 20th Century, these authors noted that global
irrigated area, an indicator of agricultural water
demand, is forecast to be 1.3 times the current
irrigated area in 2020, and 1.9 times as extensive
in 2050 (Tilman et al. 2001). Although there are
methods to increase water use efficiency, such as
drip irrigation, crop breeding, and improving soil
structure with manure additions, applications of
such approaches vary. Tilman et al. (2002) noted
that investment in technologies to improve water
use efficiencies “is best facilitated when water is
valued and price appropriately” (p. 674).
Accumulating Wealth and Changing
Diets
Social drivers of change in food demand from
agriculture include not only the number of humans
(future population growth) but also changes in
diet. Recent trends in protein sources for rapidly
developing economies suggest that as humans
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Water for Agriculture: Research Challenges for the Future 39

Table 2. Research questions in water for agriculture for the next twenty years.
1. As we enter ‘the bottleneck’ with more people and fixed resources, how will we manage water to meet the
global demand for food and fiber?
2. Will there be an expansion of rain-fed cropland?
3. Can we expand agriculture activities without loss of habitats, ecosystem services, and biodiversity?
4. Is the nature of local agriculture intensification a result of expanded irrigation and/or increased efficiency?
5. Are engineered systems changing from leaky to looped?
6. Are there impacts on the local hydrologic cycle?
7. Are local diets changing and, if so, what is the impact on water use efficiency?
8. Are inequities in local water availability resulting in fewer calories per person, less meat consumption, etc.?
9. Will global cooperation be able to provide a second “Green Revolution” and avoid major famine?
10. How are the changes in agricultural water use impacting water quality?
11. Has a sustainable pathway been found or is the local resource base being degraded?
12. Is soil quality being maintained or improved?
13. Are finite (fossil) ground water reserves being depleted?
14. How well are soft-path approaches to water resource management working?
15. Are local actions sustainable and do they assist with a global solution?
16. What pathway to change are we on? And, is that pathway adaptable?

accumulate financial resources, they tend to change
their diets to include sources of protein that require
more water to produce (Myers and Kent 2003).
Meat-based diets require much larger volumes
of water per available calorie. Given limits on
available cropland, agricultural yield growth is a
very important need if we are to meet food and
fiber demands without major investments in new
agricultural lands. While an increase of 14 percent
in global cropland is forecast by 2050 (Balmford
et al. 2005), concerns exist regarding both where
these new lands will be found and the loss of prime
agricultural land around rapidly expanding urban
areas. It will be important to monitor and quantify
these changes at varying spatial scales during the
next two decades. Agricultural intensification,
whether through increasing the number of crops
grown per year (double or triple cropping) or
through increased Green Revolution technology,
will be very important in efforts to avoid famine
(Turner II and Ali 1996). In western Kansas,
the use of increasingly more efficient irrigation
technology exemplified the Green Revolution
and has delayed the transition toward a return to
an economy based on grazing large herbivores
(or the so-called “Buffalo Commons” (Popper
and Popper 1987)), but there are local issues with
irrigation return flows and declines in water quality
(Harrington and Harrington 2005).
Research Questions
Thinking about the challenges and changes for
agriculture and water that are forecast for the next
two decades (Table 2) inspires a number of research
questions that address the multiple and complex
factors that comprise the human dimensions of
global change. Land change science concerns
suggest the importance of topics related to changes
in the location and amount of land allocated for
specific uses and how changing social drivers
will impact local decisions regarding land used
for agricultural production. Another factor will
be whether or not ideas from industrial ecology
will help us with improving water use efficiency,
especially in regards to irrigated agriculture. Ideas
from the ongoing dialog in sustainability science
and ecosystem services can inform questions that
address how our demand for water will impact
the resource base, the character of local solutions,
how cultures identify with and address the need to
move toward protein sources that require less water
(or to reduce protein intake from what currently
appears to be desired levels), and whether or not
sustainable and adaptable pathways are being
followed. Contemporary dialogs that include
local food networks, organic agriculture, political
ecology, and social inequity provide alternative
lenses with which to view the ongoing changes
in water and agriculture that will occur during
the next twenty years. A spatial perspective will
allow researchers to address how all of these issues
arrange themselves in a complex configuration of
places, cultures, and resource availability.
This essay has attempted to bring together much

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

40 Harrington
of what has been written about the subject of water
and agriculture futures and issues for the coming
decades. Water availability for agriculture presents
considerable challenges and provides numerous
areas for questioning that can be addressed by
scholars from many different perspectives. Given
the complexities of our coupled human-environment
system and the uncertainties in how humans and
their institutions will react to the concerns that have
been identified, Table 2 identifies a sample of the
types of questions about water and agriculture that
can be addressed as our global community passes
into the bottleneck.
Acknowledgements
Interested and concerned students in my
Human Dimensions of Global Change classes at
Kansas State helped provided inspiration for me
to stay informed on this subject. I also appreciate
the intellectual stimulation and challenges
from colleagues on the HERO and Ecological
Forecasting research projects that were funded by
the National Science Foundation.
Author Bio and Contact Information
John Harrington, Jr. is Professor of Geography at
Kansas State University and Coordinator of the Kansas
Geographic Alliance. His current research and teaching
interests involve global change, human dimensions of
environmental change, climatic variability and change,
and GIScience applications. Recent collaborative multi-
university research activities include Global Change in
Local Places (GCLP), the Human Environment Regional
Observatory (HERO) effort, and Ecological Forecasting.
Since 2005, Harrington has served as leader of human
dimensions research effort for the Konza Long-Term
Ecological Research program. Dr. Harrington may
be contacted at Department of Geography, 118 Seaton
Hall, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506;
785 532-3405; jharrin@ksu.edu.
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42

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 42-45, August 2009

Emerging Issues and Challenges: Natural Hazards

Burrell Montz
Professor and Chair of Geography, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC

F
loods and droughts present significant
challenges to societies throughout the world.
We grapple with ways to manage the events
and our use of the land that is affected by both the
events and the management methods. Even as we
have gained more knowledge, losses continue to
escalate (Weichselgartner and Obersteiner 2002,
White et al. 2001). Indeed the impacts of disasters
continue to increase worldwide, with more people
affected by floods and droughts than any other
category of natural hazard events (International
Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
2007). With a global annual average of 162 floods
and 32 droughts between 2000 and 2005, more
than 100 million people worldwide were affected
by these events, with droughts having a wider
reach with respect to numbers whose lives were
adversely impacted (Center for Research on the
Epidemiology of Disasters 2006). If we are going
to reduce losses, the future research agenda of water
resources geographers must address the issues that
will influence both the occurrence of and response
to such events. These are discussed below.
Climate Change
The most important concern is global climate
change. There is little doubt among most scientists
that climate change is real and that it will influence
the characteristics of weather-related events
(Hoppe and Pielke 2006), including their location,
frequency, duration, and intensity. Despite this
convergence of agreement, it remains difficult to
attribute changes in events, however measured,
to climate change, which, in turn, complicates
prediction, warning, and preparedness. We know
where floods and droughts occur now, even if we
have difficulty predicting exact timing and intensity
over the medium to longer terms. In the face of
climate change, we need additional information,
refined models, and improved dissemination of
knowledge.
We require data collection and analysis by
physical scientists addressing such issues as hydro-
climatology and impacts of intensified events on
physical systems. Such analyses will enhance
detection of trends at various spatial scales and
development of relevant databases to foster
monitoring, understanding, and communication.
This research is critical to social scientists and
policy makers who need information on where
changes and their related impacts are likely to
be felt and how much change can be anticipated.
Indeed, one of the difficulties in fostering policy
and behavioral changes to address climate change
is communicating the nature and magnitude of
its potential impacts at a location while at the
same time acknowledging inherent uncertainties
(Moser and Dilling 2007). Even if we can refine
models of climate change to provide more
reliable predictions both spatially and temporally,
mitigation, adaptation, or other changes do not
necessarily follow unless the political will exists
to do something. Having information does not
necessarily lead to policy decisions or behavior
changes. Thus, an area ripe for interdisciplinary
research is development of a framework in which
those who make decisions can use the information
provided by the scientific community.
Vulnerability
It has been well recognized that losses to floods
and droughts, as well as other natural hazards,
cannot be attributed solely or even principally to
the geo-physical events themselves. People live at

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 Emerging Issues and Challenges: Natural Hazards
risk, many because they have little or no choice
(Wisner et al. 2004). Indeed, in many places, those
with the fewest resources are relegated to the most
hazardous areas – the floodplains, low-lying areas,
and marginal agricultural lands. As a result, any
large geo-physical event is going to affect them
significantly, and they are usually least able to
recover from a disaster. With increasing population,
particularly in less developed regions, the demand
for land is also increasing, thus exacerbating the
hazardous situation for those who are already
marginalized in a society. Further, the socio-
economic and racial and ethnic characteristics of
people can lead to a situation of marginalization,
whether they live in a less developed or more
developed place. No matter what the location,
marginalization exacerbates vulnerability. Many
of these vulnerability issues have been examined
(Cutter et al. 2003, Downing and Bakker 2000,
Montz and Tobin 2003, Wisner et al. 2004), but
there has been a distinct failure to incorporate
findings into mitigation practices. This is neither
easily nor readily accomplished because it requires
working with practitioners to develop approaches
that can translate the needs found through research
into practices that can be implemented at the local
or regional level. However, non-governmental
organizations and others have worked on such
approaches, and analyses of their success and
failures may well provide a foundation upon which
progress can be made (see Jackson 1997 and Twigg
2004 for examples).
At the same time, in other places, some people
choose to live in hazardous areas because of
the amenities they offer. Indeed, water-based
locations, whether riverine, creekside, or coastal,
are frequently popular choices. Many times,
the residents have the resources to cope with a
disastrous event, but that is not universal. While
they may have financial resources, other aspects of
their situations, including their age, their mobility,
and their social networks, can contribute in major
ways to their vulnerability (see Montz and Tobin
2005 for an example).
Addressing the factors that either force or
allow people to put themselves at risk is critical
to any research agenda on water-based hazards.
This includes an analysis of the benefits and costs
(monetary and otherwise) to individuals and society
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
43
at large, with an eye to influencing policy. While
research has shown rather clearly why people live
at risk, the complexities and scope of flood and
drought management, which reflect the complexities
and scope of water resources management, have
made addressing the issue from a societal, rather
than a hydrologic, perspective very difficult. Yet,
we need to get better at addressing both.
These complexities are confounded further by
climate change. As climate changes, so will risk
zones – placing some people perhaps at less risk, but
many will be at greater risk. Significant attention
is required to address these issues. The literature
is ripe with works pointing out the differential
effects of disasters, which have been important
to fostering greater understanding of these inter-
related concerns. Now is the time to turn our
focus to developing mechanisms that address the
systemic processes that generate such conditions.
Of course, we need to continue to examine who
is vulnerable and to what, but we must also move
ahead and devote more resources to developing
comprehensive strategies for mitigating hazard
problems in the social, economic and political
contexts in which they occur; one size does not fit all.
Technology as Friend and Foe
As our understanding of hazardousness
and vulnerability has emerged, so too have
technologies such as remote sensing and
geographical information systems (GIS) that allow
us to understand better the interaction between
attributes of the physical environment and those of
the human environment (Tobin and Montz 2004).
It is through the use of such technologies that the
tracking of physical systems that generate extreme
events has improved, and predictions and warnings
have become more accurate. Improvements in these
technologies have facilitated more sophisticated
analyses at finer resolutions and precipitated more
complex modeling of large, dynamic systems, and,
at the same time, have fostered communication of
this information to those who need it in a timely
manner (Ryan 2003, Mileti and Peek 2002). In
addition, some improvements have been aimed
at fostering greater access to both the technology
and the data, thus leading to more widespread use
(Changnon 2004). We can expect that technologies
and their applications will continue to advance on
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44 Montz
all fronts. Particularly promising are applications
of geo-visualization techniques and the related
ability to use scenarios as a means of modeling
anticipated outcomes under different conditions
of uncertainty. It is incumbent upon geographers
to be at the forefront of the development and
application of these technologies by testing
different approaches and drawing on what has been
learned in other fields such as communications and
computer modeling.
Even while technology is helping us to
understand and respond to natural events, it also
continues to provide a false sense of security
(Tobin 1995). In the United States and elsewhere,
there is a long history of relying on engineering
solutions to mitigate disasters. Certainly for floods,
dams, levees, floodwalls, and other structures have
been remarkably successful in protecting flood
prone areas from flood waters, up to their design
standards. We also have numerous examples
of technological advances overcoming water
shortages. In both cases, however, the technology
may be effective in addressing the immediate
problem under current conditions, but conditions
will change over time. Further, with floods, when
the design level of the structure is surpassed or
when the integrity of the structure is compromised,
disastrous floods can and do occur. The Mississippi
River floods in 1993 and 2008 and the experiences
in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina in 2005
are good examples. Yet, even after these events,
reliance on structures continues. In part this may
be due to the fact that technology helps us to avoid
behavioral approaches, which are generally more
difficult to employ. Nevertheless, accumulating
evidence, since the work of White (1945) has clearly
demonstrated the necessity of comprehensive
planning that incorporates both structural and non-
structural adjustments if mitigation strategies are to
be fully successful. Future research, then, should
center on post-audits of events to determine the
underlying causes and direct and indirect impacts
of losses, on the impacts of mitigation measures on
land use and disaster losses, and on success stories,
as well as failures, that can foster understanding of
the interactions at play.
An additional issue is that many flood control
structures built in the U.S. are reaching the end of
their economic and/or engineering lives. Such a
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situation presents a precarious situation, but also
offers an opportunity to rethink our approach to flood
management, providing three options: (i) replacing
or repairing structures in kind; (ii) building them
better than ever by raising design standards; or (iii)
implementing a comprehensive approach to flood
management that takes a watershed scale vision to
mitigation (Montz and Tobin 2008). The short and
long term impacts, both direct and indirect, of each
of these options require careful analysis so we do
not repeat problems of the past. Our past responses
to drought merit the same consideration.
Summary
Natural hazards research is steeped in uncertainty,
with respect to both the physical and human
environments. Whether addressing too much or
too little water, we are challenged with developing
politically palatable means of encouraging
comprehensive management strategies that
incorporate the benefits of available technologies
with practices and policies that address the risk
that remains due to the design characteristics of the
technology and because of uncertainties regarding
changing climatic and watershed conditions. As the
temporal and spatial variability of global climate
change plays out, we need to direct available
and emerging technologies to developing a more
complete understanding of the physical processes
and human conditions involved and to address
those physical and socio-political factors that lead
to increased vulnerability.
Author Bio and Contact Information
Burrell Montz is Professor and Chair of Geography
at East Carolina University. She received her Ph.D.
from the University of Colorado in Boulder. Dr. Montz
has more than 25 years of experience with research
in natural hazards. Her interests center on the social
science aspects of response and policy development. She
has evaluated the effects and effectiveness of various
mitigation measures for flooding, including floodplain
designation, and more recently has focused on warning
systems and the flow and use of information by various
levels of users. She can be contacted at montzb@ecu.
edu.
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Emerging Issues and Challenges: Natural Hazards
References
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2006. 2006 Disasters in Numbers. http://www.unisdr.
org/eng/media-room/press-release/2007/2006-
Disaster-in-number-CRED-ISDR.pdf . Last accessed
12 July 2007.
Chagnon, D. 2004. Improving Outreach in Atmospheric
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85(4): 601-606.
Cutter, S., B. J. Boruff, and W. Shirley. 2003. Social
Vulnerability to Environmental Hazards. Social
Sciences Quarterly 84: 242-261.
Downing, T. E. and K. Bakker. 2000. Drought Discourse
and Vulnerability, in D.A. Wilhite (ed), Drought: A
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Hoppe, P. and R. Pielke, R., Jr. (eds.). 2006. Workshop on
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Jackson, B. 1997. Designing Projects and Project
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Mileti, D. and L. Peek. 2002. Understanding Individual
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Household Disaster Preparedness. In New Tools for
Environmental Protection: Education, Information,
and Voluntary Measures. Washington, D.C., National
Academy of Sciences.
Montz, B. E. and G. A. Tobin. 2003. Hazardousness of
the Tampa Region: Evaluating Physical Risk and
Socio-economic Vulnerability. Papers of the Applied
Geography Conferences 31: 380-388.
Montz, B. E. and G. A. Tobin. 2005. Snowbirds
and Senior Living Developments: An Analysis of
Vulnerability Associated with Hurricane Charley.
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CO, Natural Hazards Research and Applications
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Montz, B. E. and G. A. Tobin. 2008. From False Sense
of Security to Residual Risk: Communicating the
Need for New Floodplain Development Models.
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Slovak Academy of Sciences 60 (1): 3-14.
Moser, S. and L. Dilling (eds). 2007. Creating a Climate
for Change: Communicating Climate Change and
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84(8): 1001-1003.
Tobin, G. A. 1995. The Levee Love Affair: A Stormy
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Tobin, G. A. and B. E. Montz. 2004. Natural Hazards
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S.D., S.L. Cutter, and J.W. Harrington, Jr., (eds.),
Technoearth: Geography and Technology. Dordrecht,
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Disasters. New York, Routledge.
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46

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 46-51, August 2009

Integrated Policy and Planning for Water and Energy

Young-Doo Wang
Associate Director, Center for Energy and Environmental Policy;
Professor, School of Urban Affairs and Public Policy, University of Delaware

W
e are faced with chronic water and
energy vulnerabilities. Some argue
that we will face two crises in the 21st
century: a water crisis and an energy crisis (Brown
1998, 2003, Flavin 1999, Feffer 2008). Water will
become increasingly scarce as water tables drop
due to over-consumption and water quality will
continue to deteriorate as a result of excessive
contamination. Further, the present energy regime’s
dependence on non-renewable sources has added
considerable stress to the environment, including
the prospect of climate change (Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change 2007). We are amidst
a situation where we could be easily blamed for
compromising the ability of future generations to
meet their needs.
This paper first briefly describes a need for
understanding the integrated considerations of
water and energy in resource planning, especially
during droughts. After introducing a conceptual
framework of the water-energy integration, this
paper reviews the results of a national survey of
energy and water departments to see how these
synergic benefits are explored at the state level.
Lessons learned from our case studies serve as
useful guidelines for state water-energy planning
and program development. Finally, as an example
case of the water-energy nexus, the concept of
desalination is introduced with its implication on
energy demand.
Energy-Water Nexus: An E4 Framework
Given the present context, there is a need for
a greater understanding of energy-water linkages
in order to develop more effective policies to
address their mutual vulnerabilities. I envision
that the approach to resolving the issue will have
to be an integrated one that exploits the synergies
between the energy and water sectors. Synergic
benefits derived from water and energy integration
are especially significant during droughts, which
are expected to intensify from global warming,
which is, in turn, primarily the result of fossil fuel
consumption.
The main challenge that these integrated policies
will have to address is to provide sufficient clean
fresh water while maintaining adequate energy
supplies to sustain healthy and secure societies
and ecosystems. Following the U.S. Energy
Policy Act of 2005, the Department of Energy’s
national laboratories and the Electric Power
Research Institute initiated a multi-year water-
energy program, expected to cost $30 million
annually until 20091, encompassing research and
development and outreach.
Although the inter-and intra-sectoral interaction
between water and energy is much more
complicated, Figure 1 presents the linkages in
a simplified version. It is shown that water use
affects primarily the generation and consumptive
aspects of the energy sector, whereas, energy
utilization impacts all aspects of the water
sector. In California, around 19 percent of all
energy consumed is attributable to the collection,
extraction, conveyance, distribution, use, and
treatment of water (House 2007). The production
of energy from fossil fuels and nuclear power is
inextricably linked to the availability of adequate
and sustainable supplies of water for cooling. In
the U.S., thermoelectric power generation is one
of the biggest users of water, accounting for 39
percent (135 billion gallons per day) of total water
withdrawals in 2001 (U.S. Department of Energy
2006).2 As a result of these linkages there is the
potential for benefits to be accrued if an integrated

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 Integrated Policy and Planning for Water and Energy 47

Figure 1. A water-energy integrated framework.

approach is implemented in the management of gains, especially during drought periods.

both sectors.
The integration of water and energy sector
planning and management can have positive
impacts on the economy, environment, energy,
and equity (E4). Water and energy conservation
improves the E4 balance, enhancing sustainability,
particularly during drought events in urban areas
(Smith and Wang 2007, Wang et al. 2006). Many
of these benefits are interlinked and depend on
the extent of the implementation of efficiency
improvements that are possible through integration.
The framework in Figure 2 conceptualizes the
benefits of integration from the perspective of E4
The efficient use of water and energy can result
in lower utility bills for customers and bring other
long term societal benefits as it can reduce or even
eliminate the need for costly supply-side facilities
or waste water and sewage facilities (Featherstone
1996, U.S. EPA 1998, Wang et al. 2005), together
with lowering the cost of management of droughts
(Economy). The efficient use and reduced wastage
of water will lower the amount of energy needed to
supply water, in addition to a concurrent reduction
in pollution emissions from power plants (Wang et
al. 2006).
Conservation measures, as well as the efficient

Equity
Energy/
Water

Economy Environment

Figure 2. Increased water-energy integration benefits during drought

periods.

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

48
use of water will also benefit the environment as they
will reduce the need for withdrawal from surface
and ground water supplies, thereby increasing the
availability of surface and ground water supplies
for ecological functions and restricting salt water
intrusion into coastal areas (Center for Energy and
Environmental Policy 2001, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency 1999) (Environment). In the
U.S., approximately 4 percent of all electricity
consumed is used to deliver water and treat waste
water (House 2007). In California, water-related
energy use, including water pumping for irrigation,
consumes 19 percent of the state’s electricity, 30
percent of its natural gas, and 88 billion gallons
of diesel fuel annually (House 2007). When
users adopt water-efficient appliances, energy
consumption is reduced in two ways: directly, by
the appliances themselves and indirectly as water
utilities use less energy for surface and ground
water withdrawal and waste water treatment and
discharge (Cohen et al. 2004, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency 1998).
Conservation at the tailpipe end stage eliminates
all of the “upstream” energy required to bring the
water to the point of end use, as well as all of the
“downstream” energy that would otherwise be
spent to treat and dispose of this water (Cohen et
al. 2004) (Energy). Conserving water and energy
increases their availability, which makes it easier
to optimize their allocation between competing
users (Wang et al. 2006), especially during
droughts. Successful conservation efforts will
reduce conflicts over in-stream flow rights and
competing uses of water, including down stream
power generation sectors that are occurring with
increasing frequency (Vickers 2000) (Equity).
National Survey and Lessons Learned
A survey conducted by the Center for Energy
and Environmental Policy (2007) across all the
U.S. states’ energy and water departments found
that only three states (California, New York, and
Wisconsin) had some kind of integrated water-
energy programs (Wang et al. 2007). Nine states
had limited programs or were part of a regional
initiative focusing on the issue of water and energy
interactions (Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Idaho,
Maine, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and
Virginia). Eleven states responded that they did
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Wang
not have any integrated energy-water programs,
and the remaining states did not respond, but a
rigorous search of the literature and state websites
suggested that there were no integrated energy-
water programs in those states. Here resides a
fertile place for future academic exploration.
Integration of water and energy is demonstrated
to enhance E4 aspects, but synergic benefits of the
integration are not fully explored at the state level
even with federal initiation. An important question
would be why they are not fully explored and
implemented. The three cases of California, New
York, and Wisconsin provide some answers to the
question in the three areas of information, planning
and institutional coordination, and funding.
Impacts of efficiency improvements and
alternative technological developments in both
water and energy production on the synergic
benefits need to be fully understood, especially in
regards to drought events. This becomes all the
more important considering that the six hottest
years on record have occurred in the last ten
years (Goddard Institute for Space Studies 2007),
thus making us more prone to a vicious cycle of
droughts or other natural calamities. The federal
water-energy initiation needs to be tailored to meet
the specific needs of state.
Coordination within the state includes
engagement between energy utilities and
water providers directed by the public service
commission, statewide public-private partnerships,
and the combining of water and energy audits.
Water-energy integrated programs can be funded
by public benefit charges. These are ancillary charges
levied by an energy or water utility on its customers.
Further examples of program specifics include:
1. Information dissemination is a key tool for
initiating integrated water-energy planning.
By sponsoring workshops, undertaking
research, and developing websites, the state
could begin the process of building public
interest in water-energy conservation.
Education of K-12 and college students
about integrated conservation of energy and
water opportunities could be specifically
developed.
2. A pilot program in California has been used
to evaluate the energy impacts of water
resources. It also analyzed water-energy
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Integrated Policy and Planning for Water and Energy
savings in the commercial, institutional, and
industrial sectors, and evaluated the impact
of a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) on
water resources. States could also undertake
research to evaluate the impact on water
resources in achieving their mandatory RPS
target.
3. Water-energy conservation partnerships
have been formed in the case study states
to address water and energy issues. The
partnerships offer services to a range of
sectors including agriculture, commercial,
industrial, schools, and local government.
Members of the partnerships include
private and public energy and water utilities
(including wastewater utilities), customer-
based organizations, environmental groups,
consultants, universities and various state
agencies.
4. Technical and financial incentives, tax
incentives, rebates, and system benefits
charges have been used in the case study
states to support integrated water-energy
planning. These and other financial
mechanisms could be used to promote and
attain benefits associated with integrated
water-energy conservation.
5. In the case study states, no legislation has
been enacted to promote water-energy
integration except for regulations on
thermal discharges of water by power
plants. However, green building standards,
which generally focus on measures to
reduce energy use, can also address water
use, including water conservation.
6. Combining energy and water audits for
large customers, including industrial
process units, has proven effective in the
case study states. Metrics for quantifying
energy savings from water conservation
and efficiency in water utility supply and
conveyance, treatment, distribution, end
use, and waste water treatment have been
carefully defined in California, Wisconsin
and New York.
Desalination
One area which clearly reveals the water-
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
49
energy nexus is the desalination of brackish and
seawater sources. Desalination efforts are fueled
by growing concerns over increasingly expensive,
unavailable, or controversial traditional sources
of water supply. The high cost, environmental
impacts, and energy requirements of desalination
are main concerns. The cost issue is no longer the
primary barrier because of significant technological
advancement and reductions in production costs
(National Research Council 2008), but the energy
requirement is still a major issue. Even though
efficiency improvements in membrane technologies
reduce the energy needed to desalinate water,
it is essential to look for energy-efficient ways
to produce desalted water (Darwish et al. 2009).
Thermally driven desalting systems from fuel-fired
boilers are the most inefficient practice in terms of
environment, energy, and economic perspectives.
Desalination offers a great potential to the people
living in coastal areas, serving around 7 percent
of the world’s coastal population. This energy-
intensive technology mostly mushrooms, especially
in the water-poor but energy-rich nations of the
Persian Gulf. The technology is now taking off
in the European Union including Spain (Meerganz
von Medeazza et al. 2007). If fossil fuel prices
increase as predicted by pessimistic scenarios and
the carbon tax is enforced, the cost advantage for
nuclear desalination will be pronounced (Methnani
2007).
The favorable economics of nuclear desalination
may not be sufficient enough to overcome
technological risks and the socio-political
resistance against nuclear power and disposal
of its wastes. The desalination of seawater using
renewable energies is an alternative option, but
the conversion of renewable energies requires
high investment cost and the technology is not
yet mature enough to accommodate large-scale
applications (Mathioulakis et al. 2007). In recent
years, technological innovation in solar energy
and a concurrent improvement in solar economics
offer promise in the field of desalination by
renewable energies, especially with solar energy
applications.
A fundamental shift either in energy prices or
in membrane technology could bring costs down
substantially. Development of membranes that
operate effectively at lower pressures could lead
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50
to 5 to 10 percent of process cost reductions due to
a 15 percent decrease in energy demand (National
Research Council 2008). If either happened to
the extent that the marginal cost allowed for
agricultural irrigation with sea water (around
US$.08/m3 on average), some portion of the world’s
water supplies would shift from rivers and shallow
aquifers to the sea. Besides the fundamental
economic changes which would result, geopolitical
thinking about water systems would also need to
shift. Many which are currently dependent on
upstream neighbors for their water supply, would,
by virtue of their coastlines, suddenly find these
roles reversed.
Conclusion
Water and energy resources are essential
to human survival. A general conclusion of
the analysis of the energy-water conservation
programs examined in this paper is that a wide
range of knowledge, receptivity, and applications
of practices and programs can alleviate stresses on
both the water and energy sectors. Additionally,
the assessment of these programs reveals that
integrating energy and water planning has the
potential to save money, reduce waste, protect the
environment, improve equity, and strengthen the
economy.
States could utilize elements of programs and
planning approaches similar to those discussed
in the case study states and use such approaches
as models to assist in the construction of new
frameworks for the integration of water and energy
conservation. The need for this integration seems
all the more important in light of the recent droughts,
the potential for more extreme weather due to
climate change, and the demonstrated economic,
environmental, equity, and energy benefits of such
an integration.
Intense desalination activity has been witnessed
in the coastal areas of the world, including the
Arabian Gulf, the Mediterranean Sea, the Red
Sea, or the coastal waters of California, China,
and Australia. Despite the many benefits the
technology could offer, concerns have arisen over
the substantial energy demanded by the desalination
process, along with potential negative impacts on
the environment from returning the concentrated
brine back to sea (Lattemann et al. 2008). Nuclear,
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Wang
fossil fuel, and renewable energies can be used
as input fuels in the process of desalination, but
each energy source has its own issues in terms
of E4 perspectives. Nuclear faces socio-political
resistance, fossil fuels emit air pollutants, and
renewables are constrained by the high initial
cost.
The perception that desalination could meet
ever-growing fresh water demands should be
shifted. Efforts to conserve water, use water more
efficiently and recycle waste water are all the more
important, and the extent of desalination should be
restricted to the many semi-arid and arid coastal
regions in the world suffering from structural
water shortages. These and other issues related to
water-energy integration will be one of the vibrant
research agendas for the next couple of decades.
End Notes
1. For instance, Sandia National Laboratory leads
the National Energy-Water Roadmap Program.
Regional workshops have been held to identify
specific regional issues and needs associated
with the energy and water nexus.
2. It is important to note that although water
withdrawal for thermoelectric generation is
very high, it consumes only about 3.3 percent
of the water, the remaining being returned to the
source albeit with environmental impacts as a
result of changes to the water temperature. This
does become critical in areas where the aquatic
environment is highly sensitive to temperature
changes especially during dry hot weather.
Author Bio and Contact Information
Young-Doo Wang, Ph.D., is Associate Director of the
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy at the
University of Delaware. He is Professor and Director
of the Energy and Environmental Policy Graduate
Program, and Professor in the School of Urban Affairs
and Public Policy. Dr. Wang is also Co-executive
Director of the Joint Institute for a Sustainable Energy
and Environmental Future, an innovative institution
promoting peaceful and sustainable energy policy
options in Northeast Asia. He has published over
120 articles in the areas of energy, environment, and
sustainable development policy. His recent books
include Energy Revolution: Toward an Energy-Efficient
Future for South Korea (with John Byrne et al.) and
Water Conservation-Oriented Rates: Strategies to
Extend Supply, Promote Equity, and Meet Minimum
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Integrated Policy and Planning for Water and Energy 51

Flow Levels (with William Smith et al.). He can be
contacted at youngdoo@udel.edu.
References
Brown, L. 1998. “The Future of Growth.” State of the
World 1998. World Watch Institute. Pp. 3-20.
National Research Council. 2008. Desalination: A
National Perspective. Washington, D.C.: The
National Academies Press.
Smith, W. and Y-D, Wang. 2007. Conservation rates:
the best ‘new’ source of urban water during drought.
Water and Environment Journal 22 (2): 100-116.

Brown, L. 2003. “The Eco-economic Revolution: U.S. DOE/EIA. 2006. Energy Demands on
Getting the Market in Sync with Nature. Annual Water Resources: Report to Congress on the
Editions: Environment 2003/04. Pp. 55-63. Interdependency of Energy and Water. Available at:
http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/
Center for Energy and Environmental Policy. 2001. ewr/pubs/DOE%20energy-water%20nexus%20Rep
Securing Delaware’s Future Through Sustainable ort%20to%20Congress%201206.pdf.
Water Resources Management. University of
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 1998. How to
Delaware.
Conserve Water and Use it Effectively. Available at:
Cohen, R., B. Nelson, and G. Wolff. 2004. Energy http://www.epa.gov/ow/you/chap3.html.
Down The Drain: The Hidden Costs of California’s
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 1999.
Water Supply. Natural Resources Defense Council,
Guidelines for Water Conservation Plans. Available
New York, USA.
at: http://www.epa.gov/ow/ webguid.html.
Darwish, M. A., N. M. Al-Najem, and N. Lior. 2009.
Vickers, A. 2000. Demand Management and Water
Towards sustainable seawater desalting in the Gulf
Efficiency. Journal of the American Water Works
area. Desalination 235 (2009) 58-87.
Association 92(1): 68-69.
Featherstone, J. 1996. Conservation in the Delaware
Wang, Y-D., G. Alleng, J. Byrne, H. Conte, J. Karki, S.
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Rao, S. Jose, J. deMooy, A. Belden, A. Sood, and P.
Association 88(1): 42-51.
Cole. 2007. Synergic Benefits of Integrated Water and
Feffer, J. 2008. “We All North Koreans Now?” Energy Planning. Presented to the 103rd Association
TomDispatch.com. Pp. 1-14. of American Geographers Annual Meeting. San
Flavin, Christopher. 1999. Energy for the 21st Century. Francisco, CA. April 17-21.
World Bank Energy Week. Pp. 1-12. Wang, Y. D., W. Smith, J. Byrne, M. Scozzafava,
Goddard Institute for Space Studies. 2007. Global and J. Song. 2006. Freshwater Management in
Temperature Anomalies. Available at: http://data. Industrialised Urban Areas: The Role of Water
giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/tabledata/GLB.Ts.Txt. Conservation. In Velma Grover (ed.). Water: Global
Common and Global Problems. Plymouth, NJ:
House, W. L. 2007. Will Water Cause The Next
Science Publishers. Pp. 459-491.
Electricity Crisis? Water Resources Impact 9 (1),
January 2007. Wang, Y. D., W. J. Smith Jr., and J. Byrne, J. 2005.
Water Conservation-Oriented Rates: Strategies to
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 2007.
Expand Supply, Promote Equity and Meet Minimum
Climate change 2007: The physical basis, summary
Flow Levels. American Water Works Association.
for policymakers. Geneva: Intergovernmental Panel
Denver, CO, USA.
on Climate Change.
Lattemann, S. and Hopner T. 2008. Environmental
impact and impact assessment of seawater
desalination. Desalination 220: 1-15.
Mathioulakis, E., V. Belessiotis, and E. Delyannis. 2007.
Desalination by using alternative energy: Review
and state-of-the-art. Desalination 203: 346-365.
Meerganz von Medeazza, G. and V. Moreau. 2007.
Modeling of water-energy systems: The case of
desalination. Energy 32: 1024-1031.
Methnani, M. 2007. Influence of fuel costs on seawater
desalination options. Desalination 205: 332-339.

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

52

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 52-55, August 2009

Ecological Economics and Water Resources Geography

Christopher Lant
Professor of Geography and Environmental Resources, Southern Illinois Universuity Carbondale

The legal status of ecosystem services is that they of Ecological Economics 2007) lends evidence
have none (Ruhl et al. 2007: 85). that scholars from other corners of academe

T
he multifaceted, applied nature of
water resources makes it a classic
interdisciplinary field of research. Civil
engineering and hydrology were long the leaders
among water-related disciplines, while water law
and neoclassical economics focused on decision-
making rules for water resources development
and allocation. In fact, cost-benefit analysis was
invented by American economists as a means to
evaluate public investment options in the mid-20th
century era of rapid water resources development
(Tietenberg 2003). When dealing with water
resources, one bridge from geography has landed
in natural resource and environmental economics,
but the traffic crossing that bridge has never been
very brisk.
Economic Approaches to Water
Resources: Ecological vs. Neoclassical
Since the 1980s, a new school of economic
thought – ecological economics – has emerged
that promises to greatly increase this traffic flow
and therefore require a broader and renewed
bridge. From the point of view of many
neoclassical economists, ecological economics is
a renegade; Daly and Farley’s (2004) intriguing
textbook Ecological Economics: Principles and
Applications reads as an argument with many
of the foundations of neoclassical economics.
For geographers, though, ecological economic
arguments seem not just sound, but obvious and,
perhaps, represent economics finally starting to get
it right. The exponential growth of papers published
in Ecological Economics (International Society
also recognize the importance of the ecological-
economic perspective. This begs the question: does
an ecological economic approach provide a vibrant
research agenda for water resources geography in
the coming decades?
Neoclassical economics views the environment
as a subset of the economy; natural resources
such as water are an input to production and ‘the
environment’ adsorbs its waste (Daly and Farley
2004). Ecological economics, in contrast, views
the human economy as a growing subset of the
biosphere. The enormously valuable and versatile
asset of natural capital consists of both the stock of
raw materials and energy sources available to the
economy and the fund of ecosystems tied to named
places that provide essential services to society.
Ecosystem services, a flexible and powerful concept
defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
(2003) as the benefits that people derive directly
and indirectly from ecosystems, is where water
resources geography and ecological economics
find fertile common ground.
Economists, of course, have a predeliction for
placing dollar values on things and ecosystem
services is no exception. Costanza’s et al. (1997)
seminal paper valued ecosystem services at $33
trillion per year (about $5,000 per capita) compared
to a global economic product at the time of $25
trillion, bringing to bear the notion that humans
depend for their survival and quality of life equally
as much on a second, non-market, geographically
variable and specific, ecosystem services economy
as on the goods and services of the market economy.
For example, we could describe agricultural and
fishing economies at the periphery of the global
capitalist system as ecosystem service-intensive,

UCOWR Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education

 Ecological Economics and Water Resources Geography
just as we could describe automobile manufacturing
as capital-intensive. Ecosystems at the interface of
land and water – wetlands, floodplains, rivers and
lake margins as well as estuaries, seagrass beds,
coral reefs, mangroves, and tidal marshes along the
coasts – are the multipurpose ecosystem service
factories of the planet providing over half of global
service values from less than three percent of the
Earth surface (Table 1). Water is, therefore, the
most critical component of this second economy.
But how does the quantity of water, the quality of
water, the location of water, and the timing of these,
provide ecosystem services? What ecosystem
services does it provide and for whom? These
are questions with lengthy but important answers
that geographers would do well to pursue – even
without asking the economist’s question of how
many dollars they are worth.
The provision and allocation of ecosystem
services is central to ecological economics
(Daily 1997). Most geographers are familiar
with Hardin’s (1968) “tragedy of the commons”
thesis that describes one form of market failure
that occurs when the benefits of using an open
access resource, such as ground water in the
Ogallala, cod in the North Atlantic, the capacity
of the atmosphere to process carbon emissions, or
the capacity of watersheds to process nitrogen in
fertilizer runoff, accrue privately to the user while
the consequent reductions in resource availability
or ecosystem services are suffered broadly as
negative externalities. The “tragedy of ecosystem
services” (Lant et al. 2008), however, occurs
because, first, those who control land and water,
usually by possessing the limited bundle of rights
Table 1. Ecosystem types ranked by the annual value of services provided per hectare. (Source: Costanza et al. 1997).
Ecosystem
Global
services
Rank Ecosystem Type Area (million
(1994 $US
hectares)
per hectare)
1 Estuaries 22,832 180
2 Swamps/floodplains 19,580 165
3 Seagrass/algae beds 19,004 200
4 Wetlands 14,785 330
5 Tidal marsh/mangroves 9,990 165
6 Lakes/rivers 8,498 200
7 Coral reefs 6,075 82
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
53
that accompanies ownership, cannot gain revenue
from beneficiaries by providing ecosystem services
because they are non-excludable (once provided
they accrue to the entire geographic area affected)
thereby inducing free ridership (Randall 1983). To
those who have private rights in land and water,
ecosystem services are positive externalities and
are often provided only incidentally – carbon is
not deliberately sequestered, wetlands are not
deliberately restored. Ecosystem services are,
therefore, under-provided relative to their value
to society. Secondly, no one has a legal right to
ecosystem services provided on neighboring or
upstream land; if other townships build levees and
drain the wetlands landward of them, unprotected
areas elsewhere on the same floodplain lose the
flood control and other services those wetlands
had provided (Ruhl et al. 2007). Yet they have no
recourse because they never had any legal rights
in those services in the first place (Bromley 1991,
Tarlock 2000). In fact common law in the U.S.
has built a wall, preventing owners of land and
water from having to consider the consequences
on ecosystem services of their land and water use
decisions. “The legal status of ecosystem services
is that they have none” (Ruhl et al. 2007: 85).
Most essentially, ecosystem services are a
geographic phenomenon, though the geographic
analysis of ecosystem service flows from natural
capital sources to human beneficiaries is in its infancy
(see Eade et al. 1996, Guo et al 2001, Konarska
et al. 2002, Sutton and Costanza 2002, Troy and
Wilson 2006). Empirical ecological economic
studies, to the extent that they incorporate space
at all, often utilize a benefit transfer approach that
Total Global Cumulative
Cumulative
Flow Value % of total
% of total
(millions $US global ecosystem
global area
per year) service value
4,110 0.35 12.35
3,231 0.67 21.76
3,801 0.86 33.49
4,879 1.69 48.16
1,648 2.21 53.11
1,700 2.59 58.22
375 2.75 59.35
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54
(1) finds the ecosystem service value per hectare of
various land use or ecological categories from pre-
existing literature (often from Table 2 published in
Costanza et al. (1997)), (2) employ remote sensing
to measure the area of these land uses or ecological
types, (3) multiply the former by the later, and (4)
add them up. The limitations of this approach
raise a number of interesting questions that form
a research agenda for geographers. How do the
scale and spatial configuration of ecosystem types
affect the ecosystem services they provide? In
particular, high-value ecosystems such as wetlands,
rivers, seagrass beds and so forth are often, in
landscape ecology terms, patches and corridors
rather than the landscape matrix. But are there
also diminishing marginal ecological economic
returns? For example, are wetlands more valuable
on the margin when they cover five percent of a
watershed than fifty percent?
Even more essential from a human geographic
perspective is the spatial relationship between
ecosystems, as the natural capital funds that
provide services, and human settlement patterns
and the service beneficiaries they contain. Carbon
sequestration may be the only ecosystem service
for which location is not critical. Flood control
benefits, in contrast, accrue to specific beneficiaries
downstream along the floodplain or in coastal
areas prone to hurricane-induced storm surges
(e.g., Hurricane Katrina in 2005) or tsunamis
(e.g. the December 26, 2004 disaster in the Indian
Ocean). Water purification benefits may follow
similar geographical patterns, but crop pollination
by bees more likely accrues from bee habitats
to neighboring orchards following an unknown
distance decay function. Here we see a research
agenda in determining the geographic relationships
between spatial configurations of ecosystems as
suppliers of services and the locations where the
potential beneficiaries of these services live and
work.
Ecosystem services can also be analyzed from
the point of view of specific geographical locations,
such as a residence or a region. The meaning behind
the real estate mantra ‘location, location, location’
has long implied that accessibility to social services
and amenities, and the impact of social risks such
as crime, varies tremendously from point to point,
especially within cities, and is capitalized into the
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Lant
value of specific properties. But each residence
also receives a unique constellation of ecosystem
services and natural hazards that is constantly
changing due to the interaction between natural
fluctuations and human activities.
At larger spatial scales, regions partly control
their ecosystem service packages through the
economic activities that build their niche in the
global economy. By importing energy, food, and
other raw materials from other regions, some core
economic regions (e.g., New England, Japan) are
able to preserve local natural capital funds such
as wetlands and forests and thereby maintain
relatively bountiful ecosystem service flows. Other
natural resource-exporting regions (e.g. Indonesia,
the Persian Gulf) depreciate their natural capital
funds, thus suffering diminishment in ecosystem
service provision to their populations (Dauvergne
1997). This ecologically unequal exchange
(Hornberg 1998) is of great interest in water
resource geography – witness the nearly universal
opposition to projects that export water, even from
the most water-abundant regions and nations (Quinn
2007). Yet, through the “virtual water” required to
produce crops and the livestock that eat them, vast
quantities of water are traded internationally. The
U.S. for example is the world’s greatest virtual
water exporter at 131 billion gallons per day –
roughly the flow of the Ohio River (Chapagain and
Hoeskstra 2004). Valuable geographic research
lies in documenting and quantifying not only the
flow of natural capital in the form of resource
products among regions, but the less obvious
changes these flows cause for ecosystem service
provision, especially in exporting regions that can
suffer from problems of both water quality and
water supply. To what extend does this mean that
the favorable ecosystem service packages of Japan,
New England, and some other affluent regions are
indirect imports from the regions that provide their
food, energy and industrial raw materials?
The geographic analysis of ecosystem services
thus constitutes a vibrant research agenda for
water resources geography for the next 20 years,
one that will enrich both geography and ecological
economics by making more specific and tangible,
and therefore more applicable with a stronger legal
standing, our growing understanding of ecosystem
services’ essential role in human well-being.
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Ecological Economics and Water Resources Geography 55

Author Bio and Contact Informatiom wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/503305/

description#description.
Christopher Lant is Executive Director of the
Konarska, K. M., P. C. Sutton, and M. Castellon. 2002.
Universities Council on Water Resources and editor
Evaluating scale dependence of ecosystem service
on the Journal of Contemporary Water Research and
valuation: A comparison of NOAA-AVHRR and
Education. This essay, however, was written under his
Landsat TM datasets. Ecological Economics 41 (3):
other hat as Professor of Geography and Environmental
491-507.
Resources at Southern Illinois University Carbondale
where his research interests are in watershed Lant, C. L., J. B. Ruhl, and S. E. Kraft. 2008. Forum:
management, water resources policy, and, of course, The tragedy of ecosystem services. Bioscience
ecological economics and water resources sustainability. 58(10): 969-974.
He can be contacted at clant@siu.edu. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. 2003. Ecosystems
and human well-being: A framework for assessment.
References Washington, DC: Island Press.
Quinn, F. 2007. Canada’s freshwater in a continental
Bromley, D. W. 1991. Environment and Economy; perspective. Journal of Contemporary Water
Property Rights and Public Policy. Oxford: Basil Research and Education. 137.
Blackwell.
Randall, A. 1983. The problem of market failure.
Chapagain, A. K. and A. Y. Hoekstra. 2004. Water Natural Resources Journal 23(1): 133-148.
Footprints of Nations, Volume 1: Main Report. Value
of Water Research Series No. 16, UNESCO-IHP. Ruhl, J. B., S. E. Kraft, and C. L. Lant. 2007. The Law
and Policy of Ecosystem Services. Island Press,
Costanza, R., R. d’Arge, R. deGroot, S. Farber, M. Covelo, CA.
Grasso, B. Hannon, K. Limburg, S. Naeem, R. V.
O’Neill, J. Paruelo, R. G. Raskin, P. Sutton, and Sutton, P. C. and R. Costanza. 2002. Global estimates of
M. van den Belt. 1997. The value of the world’s market and non-market values derived from nighttime
ecosystem services and natural capital. Nature satellite imagery, land cover, and ecosystem service
387(6630): 253-60. valuation. Ecological Economics 41: 509-527.
Daily, G. C. (ed.). 1997. Nature’s services: societal Tarlock, A. D. 2000. Reconnecting property rights to
dependence on natural ecosystems. Washington, watersheds. William and Mary Environmental Law
DC: Island Press. & Policy Review 25(1): 69-112.
Daly, H. E. and J. Farley. 2004. Ecological Economics: Tietenberg, T. 2003. Environmental and Natural
Principles and Applications. Island Press: Resource Economics, 6th Ed. Addison Wesley.
Washington, DC. Troy, A. and M. A. Wilson. 2006. Mapping ecosystem
Dauvergne, P. 1997. Shadows in the Forest: Japan and services: Practical challenges and opportunities in
the Politics of Timber in Southeast Asia. MIT Press: linking GIS and value transfer. Ecological Economics
Cambridge, MA. 60 (2): 435-449.
Eade, J. D. O. and D. Moran. 1996. Spatial economic
valuation: Benefits transfer using GIS. Journal of
Environmental Management 48: 97-110.
Guo, Z., X. Xiao, Y. Gan, and Y. Zhang. 2001. Ecosystem
functions, services, and their values – a case study in
Xingshan County of China. Ecological Economics
28: 141-154.
Hardin, G. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science
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Hornberg, A. 1998. Towards an ecological theory of
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2007. Available at: http://www.elsevier.com/

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

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Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 56-60, August 2009

The Political Economy and Political Ecology

of the Hydro-Social Cycle
Erik Swyngedouw
Professor of Geography, School of Environment and Development, Manchester University, UK

We are witnessing something unprecedented: transformation in the way in which water policies
Water no longer flows downhill. It flows towards are thought about, formulated, and implemented.
money (Robert F. Kennedy Jr.). In what follows, an outline is provided of some of

G
eographers have been engaged in research the vital issues and socio-natural properties of the
into access to safe drinking water for years. hydro-social cycle and charts the terrain for future
In fact, Abel Wolman helped chlorinate research.
the world’s water. Over the past few years and in
the wake of the resurgence of the environmental
Metabolizing the Global/Local
question on the political agenda, a growing body Hydro-Social Cycle: The Connection
of work has emerged on the political-economy and to Struggles for Power
political-ecology of water and water circulation
Changes in the use, management, and socio-
(Gandy 1997, Loftus 2005, Kaika 2005, Castro
political organization of the water cycle and
2006). This is re-defining the contours of water
social changes co-determine each other (Norgaard
resources research and opening up an exciting and
1994). Combined with the transformation of
vitally important research agenda for the years to
water’s terrestrial and atmospheric circulation,
come.
they produce distinct forms of hydro-social
Political-ecological perspectives on water
circulation and new relationships between local
suggest a close correlation between the transfor-
water circulations to global hydrological circuits.
mations of, and in, the hydrological cycle at
In other words, hydraulic environments are
local, regional and global levels on the one hand
socio-physical constructions that are actively
and relations of social, political, economic, and
and historically produced, both in terms of social
cultural power on the other (Swyngedouw 2004).
content and physical-environmental qualities.
In a sustained attempt to transcend the modernist
There is, therefore, nothing apriori unnatural about
nature – society binaries, hydro-social research
constructed environments such as dams, irrigation
envisions the circulation of water as a combined
systems, hydraulic infrastructures, and so forth
physical and social process, as a hybridized socio-
(Harvey 1996).
natural flow that fuses together nature and society
Produced environments are specific historical
in inseparable manners (Swyngedouw 2006a).
results of socio-biophysical processes. Most social
It calls for revisiting traditional fragmented and
processes and socio-ecological conditions (cities,
interdisciplinary approaches to the study of water
agricultural or industrial production systems and
by insisting on the inseparability of the social and
the like) are invariably sustained by and organized
the physical in the production of particular hydro-
through a combination of social processes on the
social configurations (Bakker 2003, Heynen et al.
one hand (such as capital/labor relations and forms
2005).
of organization of labor) and metabolic-ecological
Such a perspective opens all manner of new
processes (that is the biological, chemical or
and key research issues and urges considering a
physical transformation of ‘natural’ resources,

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 The Political Economy and Political Ecology of the Hydro-Social Cycle
usually organized through a series of interlinked
technologies) on the other (Heynen et al. 2005).
These metabolisms (for example, the production
of potable water, agricultural products or computer
chips) produce a series of both enabling and
disabling social and environmental conditions.
While environmental (both social and physical)
qualities may be enhanced in some places and for
some people, this often leads to a deterioration
of social and physical conditions elsewhere (Peet
and Watts 1996, Keil 2000). Processes of socio-
environmental change are, therefore, never socially
or ecologically neutral. This results in conditions
under which particular trajectories of socio-
environmental change undermine the stability or
coherence of some social groups or environments,
while the sustainability of others elsewhere might
be enhanced. Consider, for example, how the
provision of water to large cities often implies
carrying water over long distances from other
places or regions. The mobilization of water for
different uses in different places is a conflict-
ridden process and each techno-social system for
organizing the flow and transformation of water
(through dams, canals, pipes, and the like) shows
how social power is distributed in a given society
(Swyngedouw 1999). For example, access to
potable water in the megacities of the Global South
is precarious for a large number of people despite
the fact that the rich and powerful generally have
more than enough water available for necessary
and luxury use. In sum, the political-ecological
examination of the hydro-social process reveals
the inherently conflict-ridden nature of the process
of socio-environmental change and teases out the
inevitable conflicts (or the displacements thereof)
that infuse socio-environmental change. Particular
attention, therefore, needs to be paid to social
power relations (whether material, economic,
political, or cultural) through which hydro-social
transformations take place. This would also include
the analysis of the discourses and arguments that
are mobilized to defend or legitimate particular
strategies. It is these power geometries and the
social actors carrying them that ultimately decide
who will have access to or control over, and who
will be excluded from access to or control over,
resources or other components of the environment.
In sum, it will be vital to examine how hydro-
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
57
social transformations are imbedded in and infused
by class, gender, ethnic or other power struggles.
These struggles will undoubtedly intensify in the
near future as environmental change accelerates
and this requires urgent scholarly attention.
Water Scarcities or Water Surpluses?
One of the pivotal terrains of environmental
social struggle unfolds over access to, control
over, and distribution of parts of the hydro-social
cycle. Powerful arguments have been mobilized in
recent years that frame water as a fundamentally
scarce resource in some places on the one hand,
and as posing immanent or real dangers due
to overabundance in areas prone to flooding,
hurricanes, and the like on the other (Bakker
2000, Kaika 2003). This area requires immediate
and urgent attention, especially given impacts
of climate change. Forms of relative scarcity in
relation to existing socio-physical conditions can
be observed in particular historical-geographical
contexts. And, water power can wreck considerable
socio-climatologic havoc (e.g., in New Orleans in
2005 or in the UK in 2007). Just as importantly,
the positive and negative socio-environmental
consequences of such conditions are socially highly
unevenly distributed, and are generated through the
particular political and institutional organization of
the hydro-social cycle. While hegemonic neoliberal
arguments claim that the market offers the optimal
mechanism for the allocation of presumably
scarce water resources, and the literature on water-
related hazards charts the uneven distribution
of the social effects engendered by such water
crises, a political-ecological perspective insists
on, and traces, the fundamentally socially
produced character of such inequitable hydro-
social configurations (Swyngedouw 2006b, 2007).
There is an urgent need, therefore, to theorize and
empirically substantiate the processes through
which particular socio-hydrological configurations
become produced that generate inequitable socio-
hydrological conditions. Put simply, interventions
in the organization of the hydrological cycle are
always political in character and therefore contested
and contestable. This intrinsically social character
of water resources management and organization
needs to be teased out and clarified.
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58 Swyngedouw
Whose Waters?
The above implies the need to address the
question of who is entitled to what quality, kind
and what volumes of water and who should control,
manage and/or decide how the hydro-social cycle
will be organized. While social movements often
invoke principles of universal water rights on
the basis of the biological necessity of access to
minimum volumes of sufficient quality of water
in order to sustain bodily metabolisms and social
reproduction, such calls for universal water rights
are systematically undermined by equally powerful
calls related to property rights and the exclusive
usage associated with them. In fact, uneven access
to or control over water is invariably the outcome
of combined geographical conditions, technical
choices and politico-legal arrangements and water
inequalities have to be understood increasingly as
the outcome of the mutually constituted interplay
between these three factors. Water research has for
too long concentrated on either the physical side
or the managerial side of the water problematic,
often tiptoeing around the vexed question of
how political economic power relations fuse the
physical and the managerial together in particular
and invariably socially uneven ways.
As Aristotle pointed out a long time ago, when
two equal rights meet, power decides. Indeed,
under the current neo-liberal hegemony, water
rights are increasingly articulated via dynamics of
commodification of water, private appropriation
of water resources, dispossession tactics, and the
like (Bakker 2003). Consider, for example, how
in former socialist states or in China publicly
owned water facilities and infrastructure have been
transferred, often without much compensation,
to private actors and capital, or how financial
investment funds (of the kind that produced, in
2008, the greatest financial crisis in a century)
have been investing in water facilities as a
purely financial asset. Macquarie, the Australian
investment fund, for example, bought Thames
Water, London’s water supply system, in 2006. In
other words, the hydro-social circulation process is
increasingly articulated via the financial nexus (see
Swyngedouw 2009).
There is an urgent need to analyze how common
or public water rights are socially, politically, and
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economically transformed into exclusive property
rights whose access is choreographed though
market mechanisms. There is significant urban-
rural tension in this scenario, evident in cities
such as Las Vegas (for more see the article by
Smith, Jr. in this same volume). Accumulation by
dispossession and the systematic inclusion of parts
of the hydro-social cycle in accumulation tactics of
private actors is rapidly reshaping the mechanisms
and procedures that regulate and organize access
to, and exclusion from access, to water, and is,
consequently, altering the social mechanisms that
shape water entitlements and water rights (Harvey
2003). Increasingly, access to water is understood
and seen as organized through market mechanisms
and the power of money, irrespective of social,
human or ecological need.
An understanding of the above is vital in light of
the failure of the international community to move
decisively towards fulfilling the “Millennium
Goal” of halving the number of people worldwide
that have inadequate access to water and sanitation
by 2015. It can now be confidently predicted that
these objectives will not be met, largely because of
the hegemony of the neo-liberal model that makes
public subsidies unacceptable, while privatizing
water delivery systems have systematically failed
to alleviate significantly the water crisis in the
Global South in places such as Manila, Jakarta, or
Lagos (see Swyngedouw 2009). Inadequate access
to water services, particularly in the less-wealthy
world’s megacities, is the prime cause of premature
mortality and this human and environmental cost
outweighs massively the predicted negative human
consequences of global climate change.
Of course, it is invariably the poor and
powerless that die of inadequate sanitation (Gleick
2004, Gleick and Cooley 2006). True scarcity
does not reside in the physical absence of water in
most cases, but in the lack of monetary resources
and political and economic clout. Poverty and
governance that marginalizes makes people die
of thirst, not absence of water. It is these urban
political-ecological perspectives that bring out the
economic and political power relations through
which access to, control over, and distribution of
water is organized. While choices regarding what
technology is ‘appropriate,’ in terms of being
physically, culturally, and economically sustainable
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 The Political Economy and Political Ecology of the Hydro-Social Cycle
and equitable, also play a major role in determining
access to safe water in less-wealthy settings (Smith,
Jr. 2008), the consideration and implementation of
these choices is a decidedly political process and
should be analyzed as such.
Governing Hydro-Social Configurations
Hydro-social configurations, of course, generally
reflect hegemonic political, social, and cultural
preferences. Ever since Karl Wittfogel’s seminal
work on the relationship between autocratic power
and hydrological systems, it has become clear
that social power becomes articulated through
socio-technical systems (Wittfogel 1957). This is
as true for the Three Gorges Dam in China as for
the management of the Upper and Lower Colorado
River, or irrigation of vineyards in California.
There is an urgent need, therefore, to explore the
intricate relationship between political systems,
and the use, management, and distribution of
water and organization of the hydro-social system.
In particular, questions arise as to the relationship
between democratic governance on the one hand
and water management on the other. It is now
commonly recognized that many large hydro-
social systems are associated with autocratic
political and institutional organizations (Worster
1985, Swyngedouw 2006b). The present debate
over water resources often sacrifices democratic
governance on the altar of technological or
economic efficiency, while safeguarding existing
power relations. Exploring the relationship between
democracy, water governance and social power is a
vitally important research question. There are also
quality questions to be asked regarding the capacity
of democratic and other systems to deal with crises
that can be associated with drought, floods, and
disease. This is particularly acute as water-related
crises are bound to increase both in number and
in scale. There is an urgent need, therefore, to
consider democratic modes of water governance
on a variety of interrelated geographical scales.
This is particularly acute in regions with strongly
competing water demands (e.g., urban vs. rural
demand regarding scarce water) on the one hand,
or where significant socio-political tensions propel
water to be used as a formidable geo-political
weapon (e.g., in the recent threat by Israel to cut
off Gaza’s water supply).
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
59
Imagining Different Hydro-Social
Metabolisms
To summarize, there are intricate and
multidimensional relationships between the socio-
technical organization of the hydro-social cycle,
the associated power geometries that choreograph
access to and exclusion from water, as well as the
uneven political power relations that affect flows
of water. There is an urgent need to explore the
various ways in which social power in its different
economic, cultural, and political expressions
fuse together with water management principles,
choice of technological systems, and structures
of supply, delivery, and evacuation of water. To
the extent that there is indeed a close relationship
between hydro-social ordering and political-
economic configurations or, in other words,
between the “nature of society” and the “nature
of its water flows,” every hydro-social project
reflects a particular type of socio-environmental
organization. Imagining different, more inclusive,
sustainable and equitable forms of hydro-social
organization implies imagining different and more
effective, assumingly democratic, forms of social
organization. This challenge is probably the most
pressing one, and one that requires a sustained
intellectual endeavor and the mobilization of
significant creative energies of all those who make
water their terrain of scholarly work.
Author Bio and Contact Information
Erik Swyngedouw is Professor of Geography at the
School of Environment and Development of Manchester
University. He previously taught at Oxford University
and was Fellow of St. Peter’s College. He is the author
of, among others, Social Power and the Urbanization
of Water (Oxford University Press 2004) and co-editor
of In the Nature of Cities (Routledge 2006). He has
written extensively on the political ecology and the
political economy of water. He can be contacted at erik.
swyngedouw@manchester.ac.uk.
References
Bakker, K. 2000. Privatizing Water: Producing
Scarcity: The Yorkshire Drought of 1995. Economic
Geography 76 (1): 4-27.
Bakker, K. 2003. An Uncooperative Commodity -
Privatizing Water in England and Wales. Oxford:
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Oxford University Press. Swyngedouw, E. 2004. Social Power and the

Castro, E. 2006. Water, Power and Citizenship: Social Urbanisation of Water. Flows of Power. Oxford:
Struggles in the Basin of Mexico. New York: Oxford University Press.
Palgrave. Swyngedouw, E. 2006a. Circulations and Metabolisms:
Gandy, M. 1997. The Making of a Regulatory Crisis: (Hybrid) Natures and (Cyborg) Cities. Science as
Restructuring New York City’s Water Supply. Culture 15 (2):105-122.
Transactions; Institute of British Geographers Swyngedouw, E. 2006b. TechnoNatural Revolutions –
22:338-358. The Scalar Politics of Franco’s Hydro-Social Dream
Gleick, P. 2004. The World’s Water 2004-2005: The for Spain, 1939-1975. Transactions, Institute of
biennial report on freshwater resources. Washington: British Geographers New Series 32 (1):9-28.
Island Press. Swyngedouw, E. 2007. Dispossessing H2O: the
Gleick, P. H., and H. Cooley. 2006. The World’s Water Contested Terrain of Water Privatization. In
2006-2007: The biennial report on freshwater Neoliberal Environments: False Promises and
resources. Washington, D.C.: Island Press. Unnatural Consequences, eds. Heynen. N.,
McCarthy, J., Prudham, S. and Robbins, P., 51-62.
Harvey, D. 1996. Justice, Nature and the Geography of New York: Routledge.
Difference. Oxford: Blackwell.
Swyngedouw, E. 2009. Troubled Waters: The Political
Harvey, D. 2003. The New Imperialism. Oxford: Oxford Economy of Essential Public Services. In Water and
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Heynen, N., M. Kaika, and E. Swyngedouw. 2005. eds. Castro J.E., Heller, L., 22-39. London: Zed
Urban Political Ecology - Politicising the Production Books.
of Urban Natures. In In the Nature of Cities - Wittfogel, K. 1957. Oriental Despotism: A Comparative
Urban Political Ecology and The Politics of Urban Study of Total Power. New Haven: Yale University
Metabolism, eds. N. Heynen, M. Kaika and E. Press.
Swyngedouw. London: Routledge.
Worster, D. 1985. Rivers of Empire. Water, Aridity,
Kaika, M. 2003. Constructing Scarcity and and the Growth of the American West. New York:
Sensationalising Water Politics: 170 Days that Shook Pantheon.
Athens. Antipode.
Kaika, M. 2005. City of Flows. London: Routledge.
Keil, R. ( ed.). 2000. Political Ecology: Local and
Global. London: Routledge.
Loftus, A. 2005. The Metabolic Processes of Capital
Accumulation in Durban’s Waterscape. In In the
Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the
Politics of Urban Metabolism, eds. N. Heynen, M.
Kaïka and E. Swyngedouw. London: Routledge.
Norgaard, R. 1994. Development Betrayed. London:
Routledge.
Peet, R., and M. Watts (eds.). 1996. Liberation Ecologies.
London: Routledge.
Smith Jr. 2008. The place of rural, remote and least
wealthy small islands in international water
development: The nexus of geography-technology-
sustainability in Chuuk State, Federated States of
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American Geographers 89 (3): 443-65.

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 61

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 61-66, August 2009

Comparative International Water Research

James L. Wescoat, Jr.
Professor, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA

T
he early decades of the 21st century will
witness increased efforts to learn from water
experiences and experiments in distant
places and times. Water problems in different
regions are increasingly linked through processes
of globalization that drive the international
diffusion of water technologies, policies, and water
use patterns, as well as global climate change that
has regional manifestations and teleconnections
that cascade through regional hydrologic systems.
Information technologies and international
organizations will also facilitate comparative
international water inquiry. But many areas,
including wealthy countries such as the U.S., have
been slow to draw upon international experience
(Wescoat, Theobald, and Headington 2008). The
U.S. National Research Council’s (2004) report
on Confronting the Nation’s Water Problems: The
Role of Research did not document significant
federal support of international water research
over the past 25 years, although there have been a
variety of U.S. Aid for International Development,
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers international research
programs.
A century earlier, U.S. water scientists traveled
around the world searching for ways to address
issues such as development of the Central Valley
of California (Wescoat 2000). The problem is
extensive – there are few comparisons of major
flood hazards problems and programs underway on
mainland rivers such as the Ganges-Brahmaputra,
Indus, Mekong, Huang Ho, and Yangtze, not to
mention the unprecedented Bangladesh Flood
Action Plan. Yet there is growing evidence of
informal, non-governmental, and historical lines
of comparative research that offer promising
directions (e.g., Duryog Nivaram on hazards, the
Centre for Science and Environment on rainwater
harvesting; and the International Rivers Network on
basin development). Other sections of this journal
issue include many examples of international
research, so this section focuses on theoretical,
methodological, and organizational trends – and
vibrant research opportunities – for comparative
research. The first section documents the implicit
use of comparison in contemporary water research.
The second section argues for a shift to explicit
comparative research on critical water problems.
The third and fourth sections show how long-
term historical research and analogical methods
contribute to that goal. The final section outlines
how future research along these lines can inform
water resource management adjustment, planning,
and design.
Implicit Comparisons in Water
Research
Much water research is comparative insofar as it
cites previous research, involves multiple cases, and
examines multiple methods or working hypotheses.
Close examination of these implicit comparisons
has relevance for more formal comparative
research on distant places and different periods
of time, which one observes in research on scale
and scaling in hydrology and water management
(Wescoat 2003). Table 1 offers a typology of
implicit and explicit comparisons observed in The
Earth as Transformed by Human Action: Global
and Regional Changes in the Biosphere over the
Past 300 Years (Turner et al. 1990).
Global change research will continue to be a
driving force for comparative international inquiry,
though it will need to be increasingly critical of
uneven, sometimes useless, international datasets

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

62 Wescoat

Table 1. Outline of Comparative Approaches in Turner et al. (1990) (with selected chapter citation and
notes) (Source: Wescoat 1994).
1 GLOBAL: GLOBAL
• Compare Present Conditions with Baseline
• Compare Natural and Anthropogenic Sources
• Geographic Units-19 Components (Part II)
• Time Scale-Eons to Centuries
2 COMPONENTS: COMPONENT
• Scale Varies-19 Components (Part II)
• Compare Magnitudes (Quantities, Deviations from Normals)
• Compare Trajectories (Shape of Curves)
• Compare Scale-Control-Response Relations (Chapter 9)
3 GLOBAL AVERAGE: REGIONAL VARIATIONS
• Geographic Units – Continents; Countries; Physiographic and Ecological Regions; Localities
• Compare Uses (e.g., Types of Water Use, Chapters 14 and 15)
• Compare Magnitudes (e.g., Population data, Chapter 3)
• Compare Regional Patterns (e.g., population, Chapter 2)
• Comparison or Analogy? (Part: Whole)
4 GLOBAL COMPONENTS: REGIONAL CASES
• Twelve Regions (Part III)
• Regional Consequences of Global Climate Change (Chapter 34)
• Global Consequences of Regional Land-Use Change (Chapter 30)
• Integrate Global History and Regional Cases (Chapters 10 and 11)
5 REGION: REGION
• Approach: “Varieties of Environmental Transformation”
• General Issues: Defining the Region; Regional Change; Historical Geographic Framework
• Research Design Issues: Case Study Protocol; Case Study Selection; Case Study Grouping
• Two-Region Comparisons
• Cross-Cutting Comparisons
6 REGION: ITSELF
• Numerous (All Chapters, especially Chapter 42)
• Historical Change (“One Region” Comparisons)
• Subregion Comparisons
7 PERSPECTIVE: PERSPECTIVE
• Varieties of Understanding: Meaning of Change; Explanation of Change (Parts I and IV)
• Small Sample: Variables > Chapters
• Comparison or Juxtaposition?
8 NORMATIVE COMPARISON
• Retrospective: “What Ought to be the Human Use of the Earth?”
• Limited Coverage (Editorial Introductions; Chapters 8, 40, and 41)
• Potential Extensions of the Varieties of….” Genre

(e.g., national-scale access to safe water and proceed through a chain of water resources impacts
sanitation data) (Gleick 2009, Satterthwaite 2003). using different models and data that propagate
Global change research also employs scenario uncertainties to levels that, at present, offer a
methods that begin with climate variability and powerful impression of potential impacts but only

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 Comparative International Water Research
a limited basis for rigorous comparison of water
policy alternatives.
Thus, one opportunity for future research in
the next twenty years will be to demonstrate how
reanalysis of previous research and data can,
and cannot, inform comparative water policy. A
second challenge will be to redesign data collection
strategies to enable meaningful comparisons
(e.g., of city-specific provision of safe water and
sanitation rather than aggregate national figures).
A third opportunity lies in determining the
combinations of rigorous comparative methods
that best apply to different water problems.
Comparing Critical Water Problems
Future comparative research will emerge
from concern about critical water problems; that
is, pressing issues that may be aggravated under
future conditions. Current examples include water
conflict worldwide, water scarcity, participatory
watershed management, water poverty, ground
water governance, water and gender-equity, water-
related hazards, dams and development, human
rights to water, water privatization and pricing, and
so forth (Moench et al. 2001-3, Swyngedouw 2004,
Thompson 2001, Wolf 2009, World Commission on
Dams www.dams.org, to offer a few examples).
International research organizations will play
new roles in expanding the scope and application
of international comparison. For example, the
Pacific Institute has published biennial reviews
in The World’s Water and other reports on
critical international water issues (Gleick 2009,
www.pacinst.org). The Institute for Social and
Environmental Transition (http://www.i-s-e-
t.org) is a virtual research group that undertakes
comparative ground water and water hazards
research in the U.S., Nepal, India, and Pakistan.
At larger scales, international organizations from
the International Water Management Institute to
the Self-Employed Women’s Association, both
in South Asia, have developed around some of
the critical water problems listed above. They
challenge bi-lateral and multi-lateral organizations
such as U.S. Aid for International Development and
the World Bank that dominated the field in the 20th
century, in part by mobilizing critical international
policy reviews of large dams, participatory
watershed management, sanitation programs,
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
63
and water rights reform. Two opportunities for
future research include developing effective
communication among comparable yet different
research approaches, and developing credible
international peer review processes that draw upon
comparative international cases (e.g., as pursued
by the World Commission on Dams).
Intergovernmental organizations such as the
World Water Forum and World Water Council
have become inter-annual venues for moving from
daily struggles to international change, though
they often display the activists’ impatience with
long-term research, which is understandable, but
mistaken, for reasons indicated below.
International Water Histories
As new water organizations make history, they
will also be well-advised to draw upon the rich body
of historical research on water problems. Historical
research sheds light on how problems emerge
across different geographic conditions and time
scales. Archaeological research also sheds light on
the long-term sustainability of pre-modern water
experiments (e.g., irrigation, storage, and water
lifting systems). Comparative inquiry exploded in
the mid-20th century with Karl Wittfogel’s (1964)
Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total
Terror (Figure 2), whose notoriety stimulated
intense international irrigation research (Wescoat
2000). Notably absent are comparisons of colonial
water regimes, post-colonial basin development,
and internationally networked non-governmental
water movements. Establishment of the
International Water History Association (IWHA)
promises to greatly expand research on long-term
change in water systems (www.iwha.org). IWHA
has published A History of Water (Jakobsson
2004) in three volumes that, along with work by
the American Society for Environmental History,
the Institute for Environmental Historians, and
related agricultural, technological, archaeological,
and public history organizations helps support and
disseminate historical research on international
water policy.
Other organizations will shed light on long-term
change in water law and policy (e.g., the UNESCO
Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science at Dundee
Scotland (http://www.dundee.ac.uk/water/); and
the UN FAO Legislative Branch (http://www.fao.
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64 Wescoat
org/legal/, http://www.waterlawandstandards.org/
index.htm). Future research priorities include: 1)
analysis of time scales of water policy change, that
is, the conditions under which policies change on
annual or decadal periods; 2) assessing the long-
term performance of incremental versus major,
and procedural versus substantive, policies; and 3)
determining the measures and necessary conditions
of long-term water policy effectiveness.
International Water Analogies and
Transplants
Although historians rightly caution against
extrapolations from historical events to future
actions, change is the ultimate, if not immediate,
aim. The uses and abuses of history will thus be
addressed through increasingly sophisticated use
of analogies, in which one consciously design
options that broaden the range of choice (Meyer
et al. 1998). These analogical methods have been
employed in global climate change research, and
they are now expanding the scope of water rights
from human use to human rights and animal rights
(Moench et al. 2001-03, Wescoat 1995). It remains
to be seen whether such analogies might extend to
plants, ecosystems, and water bodies in different
parts of the world. Although analogies have
sometimes lacked rigor, systematic methodologies
are available in legal systems (e.g., Roman, civil,
common, international and Islamic legal traditions
where analogical methods (qiyas) are sophisticated
(Hasan 1986)).
In comparative law, the concept of “legal
transplants” seeks to explain the diffusion,
imposition, and adaptation of water policies from
one region to another. Originally developed
to explain the diffusion of Roman law, it has
relevance for many uses of precedents in water
law (Wescoat 2001, 2005). The U.S. Food and
Agriculture Organization’s Legislative Branch
has compiled and drafted water codes for decades
while the Centre for Water Law, Policy and Science
at Dundee Scotland is a hub for future international
water policy research and experimentation.
In coming decades, analogies and transplants
will focus on issues of “translation,” – languages
and cultural practices that strive to make sense of
and advance water management practices. Reform
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movements – whether for water pricing, expanded
access for the poor, or water governance – involve
long-term changes in the languages of water
management (e.g., for applications of translation
theory to long-term settlement of the Bengal delta,
for example, see Stewart (2003)). Future research
should strive to explain why international water
policy precedents and innovations are adapted
by some countries at certain moments in their
histories. Examples include U.S. citation of Roman
and British common law on the state’s public trust
for submerged lands in the late-19th century, recent
citation of U.S. cases in ground breaking cases on
the public trust in water and related land resources in
India, and South Africa’s impressive post-apartheid
survey of water laws and policies (Wescoat 2009).
Future research should also strive to explain when
and why international experience is eschewed, as
in the current U.S. Supreme Court’s opposition to
drawing upon cases from other countries and the
consequences of weak international programs in
U.S. water agencies (National Research Council
2004).
International Adjustment, Planning,
and Design
Policy documents on human dimensions of
global change focus on “adaptation” in different
regions and sectors. As in climate scenario impact
analysis, however, adaptation has more scientific
than practical importance, as adaptation can only
be determined after events have proven actions
to be adaptive or maladaptive. Gilbert White
recognized this limitation a half-century ago when
he articulated the concept of human adjustment,
which anticipates environmental change and
changes as actions prove adaptive or otherwise.
White (1945, 1991) applied this concept across a
wide range of scales, regions, and problems.
Further extensions will encompass experiments
in water resources planning and design. The
Harvard Water Program in the mid-20th century
yielded the breakthrough Design of Water Resource
Systems (Maass 1962), leading some to ask if it
should be revived (Reuss 2003). Societies are not
waiting for universities to answer this question as
they generate myriad water-design innovations
from green roofs to bioswales, rain gardens, porous
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Comparative International Water Research
paving, microirrigation, constructed wetlands and
much more around the world. Rainwater harvesting
and oral rehydration therapies travel from South
Asia to the U.S., while ecological stormwater
management practices flow in the reverse direction
(France 2002). Urban Long-Term Ecological
Research projects in Baltimore and Phoenix
subject these design innovations to monitoring and
evaluation, which will ideally bring comparative
water resource geography and design much closer
together in the decades ahead.
Conclusion
The 21st century will almost certainly be an era
of increased global circulation of water issues,
inquiry, expertise, and action. During the late
20th century, international water organizations
expanded in Europe, Scandinavia, and South Asia.
While they succeeded in creating new programs,
the field of comparative international research has
lagged behind these organizing and information
dissemination efforts.
In light of the critical water problems faced in
every region of the world, the next twenty years
will require a major shift from largely implicit
comparisons to rigorous comparative analyses that
analyze and expand the range of water management
adjustments that are designed to address these
problems in different regions of the world. These
comparative analyses will need to draw upon rich
historical experience and geographical contexts
that require new combinations of quantitative
analyses, qualitative case study, and creative
analogy. Research approaches that developed
in limited interdisciplinary ways will need to be
dramatically adapted, in ways analogous to river
basin planning and water systems analysis in the
20th century, but that address issues that those
earlier approaches overlooked or aggravated. It
is a research vision that will requires all of the
comparative international insight that can be
attained.
Author Bio and Contact Information
James L. Wescoat, Jr. is Aga Khan Professor of
Islamic Architecture at MIT and member of the City
Design and Development and Environmental Planning
and Policy groups. His research concentrates on water
systems in South Asia and the U.S. from the site to river
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
65
basin scales. Professor Wescoat publishes on the water-
conserving design of Indo-Islamic gardens and cities.
He has conducted policy research in the Colorado, Indus,
Ganges, and Great Lakes basins.   In 2003 he published
Water for Life: Water Management and Environmental
Policy with geographer Gilbert F. White; and in 2007 he
co-edited Political Economies of Landscape Change:
Places of Integrative Power. He can be contacted at
wescoat@mit.edu.
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www.transboundarywaters.orst.edu/. Accessed on
May 14, 2009.

Wescoat, J. L. Jr. 2001. Water rights in South Asia and

the United States: comparative perspectives, 1873-
1996. Pages 298-337 in J. Richards (ed.) Land,
Property and the Environment. ICS, Oakland.

Wescoat, J. L. Jr. 2000. Wittfogel east and west: changing

perspectives on water development in South Asia and
the US, 1670-2000. Pages 109-32 in A. B. Murphy
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the Environment: Enduring and Evolving Geographic
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Wescoat, J. L. Jr. 1995 The `right of thirst’ for animals

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2008. Water and poverty in the United States. In:

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 67

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 67-75, August 2009

A Long Term View of Water and International Security1

Aaron T. Wolf
Professor of Geography; Department of Geosciences, Oregon State University

W
ater management is, by definition,
conflict management. Postel (1999)
describes the roots of the problem:
Water, unlike other scarce, consumable resources,
is used to fuel all facets of society, from biologies
to economies to aesthetics and spiritual practice.
Moreover, it fluctuates wildly in space and time, its
management is usually fragmented, and it is often
subject to vague, arcane, and/or contradictory legal
principles. There is no such thing as managing water
for a single purpose – all water management is
multi-objective and based on navigating competing
interests. Within a nation, these interests include
domestic users, agriculturalists, hydropower
generators, those seeking recreation, and
environmentalists – any two of which are regularly
at odds – and the chances of finding mutually
acceptable solutions drop as more stakeholders are
involved. Add international boundaries, and the
chances decrease yet again.
Surface and ground water that cross international
boundaries present increased challenges to regional
stability because hydrologic needs can often be
overwhelmed by political considerations. While
the potential for paralyzing disputes is especially
high in these basins, history shows that water can
catalyze dialogue and cooperation, even between
especially contentious riparians. There are 263
rivers around the world that cross the boundaries
of two or more nations, and an untold number of
international ground water aquifers. The catchment
areas that contribute to these rivers comprise
approximately 47 percent of the land surface of the
earth, include 40 percent of the world’s population,
and contribute almost 80 percent of fresh water
flow (Figure 1) (Wolf et al. 1999).

Figure 1: International river basins.

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

68 Wolf

Sharing Troubled Waters River Commission survived two wars between

India and Pakistan. And all ten of the countries that
In order to rigorously examine the history share the banks of the Nile are currently involved
of water conflicts, researchers at Oregon State in negotiations over cooperative development of
University undertook a three-year research project the basin.
that attempted to compile a data set of every So if there is little violence between nations over
reported water-related interaction between two their shared waters, what’s the problem? Is water
or more nations, whether incidents of conflict or actually a security concern at all? In those cases
cooperation, over the past 50 years (Wolf et al. where water has caused or exacerbated tensions,
2003). The study documented more than 1,800 such it is worth understanding how it did so, in order to
interactions that involved water as a scarce and/or determine both how complications arise, and how
consumable resource or as a quantity to be managed they are eventually resolved.
– i.e., where water was the driver of the events.2
The study reached a number of conclusions. The Anatomy of Conflict
First, despite the potential for dispute in
The first complicating factor leading to conflict
international basins, the record of cooperation
is the length of time between when nations first
historically overwhelms that of acute conflict over
start to impinge on each others’ water planning and
international water resources. During this time
when agreements are finally, arduously, reached.
period, 157 treaties were negotiated and signed, as
A general pattern has emerged for international
opposed to only 37 acute disputes. In fact, the only
basins over time. Countries that share access to a
true “water war” between nations in the historical
basin tend to first implement water-development
record occurred over 4,500 years ago, between
projects unilaterally, on water within their territory,
the city-states of Lagash and Umma in the Tigris-
in order to avoid the political intricacies of jointly
Euphrates basin (Wolf et al. 2003).
managing the shared resource. At some point, one
Second, despite the fiery rhetoric of politicians,
of the countries, generally the most powerful,
often aimed at their own constituencies rather
will implement a project that impacts at least one
than at the enemy, most actions taken over water
of its neighbors. This project can, in the absence
are mild. Third, nations find many more issues on
of relations or institutions conducive to conflict
which to cooperate with regard to water resources
resolution, become a flashpoint, heightening
than to fight over. Fourth, water acts as both an
tensions and creating regional instability that
irritant and as a unifier. As an irritant, water can
require years or, more commonly, decades to
make good relations bad and bad relations worse.
resolve. Treaties over the Indus took ten years of
But international waters can also unify basins
negotiations, the Ganges thirty, and the Jordan
where relatively strong institutions are in place.
forty.
The historical record shows that international
In the meantime, water quality and quantity
water disputes do get resolved, even among bitter
degrades to the point that the health of dependent
enemies, and even as conflicts erupt over other
populations and ecosystems are damaged or
issues. Some of the most vociferous enemies
destroyed. This problem gets worse as the dispute
around the world have negotiated water agreements
gains in intensity, as illustrated by the ecosystems
or are in the process of doing so. The institutions
of the lower Nile, the lower Jordan, and the
they have created frequently prove to be resilient
tributaries of the Aral Sea, all of which have fallen
over time and during periods of otherwise strained
casualty to overuse upriver and to the intractability
relations. The Mekong Committee, for example,
of international disputes. During these periods,
has functioned since 1957, exchanging data
threats and disputes rage across boundaries, like
throughout the Vietnam War. Secret “picnic table”
those between Indians and Pakistanis and between
talks have been held between Israel and Jordan
Americans and Canadians.
since the unsuccessful Johnston negotiations of
A perhaps even more important set of
1953-55, even though these neighbors were until
disputes, however, takes place at the subnational
only recently in a legal state of war. The Indus
level. Irrigators, indigenous populations, and

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 A Long Term View of Water and International Security
environmentalists, for example, often see water
as tied to their very way of life, increasingly
threatened by newer uses for cities and hydropower.
Numerous violent incidents have occurred at
the sub-national level, generally between tribes,
water-use sectors, or states/provinces. In fact,
our recent research at Oregon State suggests that
as the level at which the dispute occurs descends
towards the locality, the likelihood and intensity of
violence goes up (Giordano et al. 2002). The many
examples of internal water conflicts range from
interstate violence and death along the Cauvery
River in India, to California farmers blowing up a
pipeline meant for Los Angeles, to �������������������
clashes between
Chinese farmers and police in Shandong in 2000 in
response to government plans to divert irrigation
water to cities and industries.
As water quality degrades or quantity diminishes
over time, the effect on the stability of a region can
be unsettling. For example, for the thirty years
that the Gaza Strip was under Israeli occupation,
water quality deteriorated steadily. Salt water
intrusion degraded local wells, and water-related
diseases took a rising toll on the people living
there. In 1987, the Palestinian uprising known
as the Intifada broke out in the Gaza Strip, and
quickly spread throughout the West Bank. While it
would be simplistic to claim that water quality was
a direct cause of the conflict, it was undoubtedly an
irritant exacerbating an already tenuous situation.
Two-thirds or more of the world’s water use
is dedicated to agriculture, so when access to
irrigation water is threatened, one result can be
mass migrations of out-of-work, disgruntled men
from the countryside to the cities – invariably a
recipe for political instability. In pioneering work,
Sandra Postel identified those countries that rely
heavily on irrigation and whose agricultural water
supplies are threatened either by a decline in quality
or quantity. The list includes many of the world’s
current security concerns, including India, China,
Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Bangladesh, Iraq, and
Egypt.
A common assumption holds that scarcity of a
critical resource drives people to conflict. It feels
intuitive: The less there is of something, especially
something as important as water, the more dear it
is held and the more likely people are to fight over
it. Once again, though, our study at Oregon State
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
69
found conclusions that were counter-intuitive.
Arid climates harbored no more conflicts than
humid climates, for instance, and international
cooperation actually increased during droughts.
In fact, when we ran the numbers, none of the
“obvious” variables proved decisive: Democracies
engaged in water conflict as often as autocracies,
rich countries as often poor countries, densely
populated countries as often sparsely populated
ones, and large countries as often as small ones.
A more central variable, it turned out, was the
strength of institutions for dealing with shared
water resources. If naturally arid countries
tended to be more cooperative, it was due to the
institutional strategies necessary for adapting to
water-scarce environments. Once we began to
focus on institutions – whether defined by formal
treaties, informal working groups, or generally
warm relations – we began to get a clearer picture
of the settings most conducive to solving political
tensions over international waters, and those that
are less favorable.
We found that the likelihood of conflict increases
significantly whenever two factors come into play.
The first is any large or rapid change that occurs
either in the basin’s physical setting (typically the
construction of a dam, river diversion, or irrigation
scheme), or in its political setting (especially the
breakup of a nation that results in new international
rivers). The second factor is the inability of existing
institutions to absorb and effectively manage that
change. This is typically the case when there is
neither any treaty spelling out each nation’s rights
and responsibilities with regard to the shared
river, nor any implicit agreements or cooperative
arrangements. Even the existence of technical
working groups can provide some capability to
manage contentious issues, as they have in the
Middle East.
The overarching lesson of our study is that
unilateral actions to construct a dam or river
diversion in the absence of a treaty or other
protective international mechanism is highly
destabilizing to a region, often spurring decades
of hostility before cooperation is pursued. In
other words, the red flag for water-related tension
between countries is not water stress per se, but
rather the unilateral exercise of domination of an
international river, usually by a regional power.
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70
Why Might the Future Look Nothing
Like the Past?
Some aspects of the future will probably look
very similar to the present, especially the potential
for the global wealthy to be able to adapt to change,
while the poor will not. Consider for example, the
problem of flooding in the Netherlands versus in
Bangladesh. Both are low lying countries with
little topography, and both are subject to the
hazards of flooding potentially exacerbated by
rising sea levels. Multi-million dollar sea-walls are
built to protect the Netherlands, with the result that
flood-related deaths and damage are negligible,
while every year thousands die amid wide-spread
devastation in Bangladesh. Similarly, few suffer
from the effects of water shortage in the more-
wealthy world, while 2.2 to 5 million people die
every year in the developing world from water-
related causes (Gleick 1996). While there are gains
to access to drinking water and sanitation, in the
less-wealthy world, people will continue to suffer
and die at unprecedented rates, and ecosystem
degradation will continue at alarming rates.
Yet, the entire basis of the Oregon State study
rests on the not unassailable assumption that we
can tell something about the future by looking at
the past. It is worth stopping at this point, then, and
challenging the very foundation of that assumption:
Why might the future look nothing at all like the
past? What new approaches or technologies are
on the horizon to change or ameliorate the risk to
the basins we have identified, or even to the whole
approach to basins at risk?
By definition, a discussion of the future can not have
the same empirical backing as a historical study – the
data just are not there yet. Yet there are cutting edge
developments and recent trends that, if one examined
them within the context of this study, might suggest
some possible changes in store for transboundary
waters in the near future. What follows, then, are
several possibly fundamental changes in the way we
approach transboundary waters, and implications
for how the research agenda may both shape and be
shaped by these developments.
New Technologies for Negotiation
and Management
The Oregon State University data set of
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Wolf
political conflict and cooperation (see www.
transboundarywaters.orst.edu) goes back to
1948. In some ways, water management is very
similar now as it was then (or, for that matter, as
it was 5,000 years ago). But some fundamental
aspects are profoundly different. Institutions are
getting better and more resilient, management and
understanding are improving, and these issues
are increasingly on the radar screen of global and
local decision-makers. But most importantly, the
21st century has access to new technology which
could not be dreamed of in 1948, and which adds
substantially to the ability both to negotiate and to
manage transboundary waters more effectively:
• Major advances are being made regularly
in water technologies designed either to
increase supply – e.g., desalination, waste
water reclamation – or decrease demand –
e.g., drip irrigation, plant genetics, low-flow
utilities. As a country’s economy grows, its
per capita water use initially grows as well, but
eventually can drop in water stressed regions,
as has been the case in Israel and California;
• Modular modeling systems such as STELLA,
Waterware, and Riverware can now be used
for comprehensive modeling of hydrologic
and human systems. Because of their modular
design, they can also act as a facilitation
tool by allowing managers/negotiators to
cooperatively build the model, increasing the
joint knowledge base and communications.
Graphical User Interfaces allow for each
component to be brought together into an
intuitive, user-friendly setting;
• Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow
several spatial data layers, encompassing
biophysical, socioeconomic and geopolitical
parameters, to be viewed and analyzed
graphically, while advances in remote sensing
allow for flow data to be collected from
ungauged basins, simultaneously reducing
the options for holding data secret; and,
• Real time monitoring tools, such as radio-
controlled gauging stations, add new options
for real time management, and allocations
based on existing hydrologic settings rather
than fixed quantities.
While new technologies and data cannot replace
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 A Long Term View of Water and International Security
the political good will necessary for creative
solutions, nor are they widely available outside
the developed world, they can, if appropriately
deployed, allow for more robust negotiations and
greater flexibility in joint management.
Historically, data has been a tool incorporated in
power relations between riparians where, generally,
the relatively greater access to information by the
regional hegemon has influenced process; Egypt
on the Nile, India on the Ganges, and Israel on the
Jordan have all been cited as examples (Zeitoun
and Mirumachi 2008).
Today there are numerous signs of how specific
technologies are subtly transforming conflict
resolution, negotiations, and decision dynamics in
water conflicts. For example, software and visual
displays facilitate the joint creation of models
of water resources by political and technical
stakeholders (United States Army Corps of
Engineers 2006). They also raise the real potential
for expanding options for political negotiators and
decision makers. And as negotiation theory tells
us, the ability to expand options is often the key to
successful negotiations.
Remote sensing technology, while not replacing
the need for “ground truthing,” gives countries and
jurisdictions the ability to build a fairly accurate
picture of water flow in other jurisdictions,
regardless of the level of data sharing. This
technological capability is and will continue
to transform the relationships and negotiations
among jurisdictions. Trying to keep it all secret or
giving misleading data just won’t work like it used
to; more people have more access to data. And all
of this technology is disseminating, democratizing,
faster than anyone predicted.
Virtually all of the world’s viable river basin
organizations evolved, usually over a period of
several decades, in response to extreme hydrologic
events. The achievement of shared data and trusted
technical expertise has been central to their success.
The interplay between the political and technical
in achieving this state is complicated. But river
basin organization viability, often demanded by
the populations served, has ultimately depended in
great part on such trusted technical agents.
Global Climate Change
It is clear that the likelihood of political tension
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
71
is related in part to the rate of change within a
basin. It is also clear from most climate studies that
it is precisely the rate of change of the global and
regional hydrologic cycles that are most likely to
be exacerbated by global climate change (Michael
and Pandya 2009, Svendsen and Künkel 2009).
While some areas will become wetter and some
drier, the variability of extreme events will likely
increase throughout much of the world. Since
violence becomes likely when change exceeds the
rate of institutional capacity to absorb the change,
increased variability will put greater stress on the
hydro-political system. For example, the entire
water rights and distribution network of many parts
of the world rely on the natural storage of water
resources in the snow packs of mountain ranges,
snow packs projected to decrease dramatically in
coming years in much of the world. With more water
flowing earlier in the year, water allocations in the
dry months will become increasingly threatened,
at the same time as devastation during wet months
will increase, combining to put dangerous stresses
on agriculture, industry, and generally on regional
natural and human resources (Dinar et al. 2009).
Climate change is already front and center of
the vibrant research agenda and its implications
threaten to become overstated. In absolute terms,
the bulk of the water crisis falls to ancient causes
– population and poverty – yet the increase in
variability and uncertainty cannot be ignored.
Globalization: Private Capital,
WTO, and Circumvented Ethics
Very little of the recent attention on globalization
and the rise of the World Trade Organization (WTO)
has centered on water resources, but there is a
definite water component to these processes. One
of the most profound is the shift of development
funds from global and regional development banks
such as the World Bank and the Asia Development
Bank to private multinationals, such as Bechtel,
Vivendi and Ondeo (formerly Lyonnaise des Eaux)
(see for example, Anderson and Snyder 1997,
Finger and Allouche 2002). Development banks
have, over the years, been susceptible to public
pressures and ethics and, as such, have developed
procedures for evaluating social and environmental
impacts of projects, and incorporating them in
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72
decision making. On international waters, each
development bank has guidelines that generally
prohibit development unless all riparians agree to
the project, which in and of itself has promoted
successful negotiations in the past. Current research
on the viability of a potential canal between the Red
and Dead Seas, for example, required extensive
negotiations that resulted in first-ever political
recognition of Israel, Jordan, and Palestine as legal
riparians to the Jordan River (Fischhendler 2008).
Private enterprises have no such restrictions, and
nations eager to develop controversial projects
have been increasingly turning to private capital to
circumvent public ethics. The most controversial
projects of the day – Turkey’s Greater Anatolia
Project, India’s Narmada River project, and China’s
Three Gorges Dam – are all proceeding through
the studied avoidance of development banks and
their mores (Finger and Allouche 2002).
There is a more subtle effect of globalization,
though, which has to do with the World Trade
Organization and its emphasis on privatization
and full cost recovery of investments. Local and
national governments, which have traditionally
implemented and subsidized water development
systems to keep water prices down, are under
increasing pressure from the forces of globalization
to develop these systems through private companies.
These large multinational water companies in turn
manage for profit and, if they use development
capital, are pushed to recover the full cost of
their investment. This can translate not only into
immediate and substantial rises in the cost of
water, disproportionately affecting the poor, but
also to greater eradication of local and indigenous
management systems and cultures. If there is to
be water-related violence in the future, it is much
more likely to be of the “water riots” variety
against a Bechtel development in Bolivia in 1999
than “water wars” across national boundaries.
As World Trade Organization rules are elaborated
and negotiated, real questions remain as to how
much of this process will be required of nations
in the future, simply to retain membership in the
organization. The “commodification” of water as
a result of these forces is a case in point. Over
the last twenty years, global water policy meetings
have passed resolutions that, among other issues,
defined water as an “economic good,” setting the
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Wolf
stage at both the 2000 and 2003 World Water Forums
for an unresolved show-down against those who
would define water as a human or ecosystem right
(Gleick 2005). The debate looms large over the
future of water resources: if water is a commodity,
and if the World Trade Organization rules disallow
obstacles to the trade of commodities, will nations
be forced to sell their water? While far-fetched
now (even as a California company is challenging
British Columbia over precisely such an issue under
North American Free Trade Agreement rules), the
globalization debate between market forces and
social forces continue to play out in microcosm in
the world of water resources.
The Geopolitics of Desalination
Twice in the last 50 years – during the 1960s
nuclear energy fervor, and in the late 1980s, with
“discoveries” in cold fusion – much of the world
briefly thought it was on the verge of having access
to close-to-free energy supplies. “Too cheap to
meter” was the phrase during the Atoms for Peace
Conference. While neither the economics nor the
technology finally supported these claims, it is not
far fetched to picture changes that could profoundly
alter the economics of desalination.
The marginal cost of desalinated water (between
US$0.55 and US$0.80/m3) makes it currently cost-
effective only in the developed world, where (1)
the water will be used for drinking water; (2) the
population to whom the water will be delivered
lives along a coast and at low elevations; and (3)
there are no alternatives. The only places not so
restricted are where energy costs are especially
low, notably the Arabian Peninsula. A fundamental
shift either in energy prices or in membrane
technology could bring costs down substantially.
If either happened to the extent that the marginal
cost allowed for agricultural irrigation with ocean
water (around US$.08/m3 on average), a large
proportion of the world’s water supplies would
shift from rivers and shallow aquifers to the ocean
(an unlikely, but plausible, scenario). And the price
of desalinization is dropping, dramatically. The
bid prices for a project in Tampa Bay, Florida, are
less than half of what were considered the lowest
cubic meter prices for desalinated water less than
10 years ago. This change in price is important
because the trend for desalinization, in many ways,
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 A Long Term View of Water and International Security
makes it look more competitive with other sources.
And we should remember that most of the world’s
population lives close to the coast.
Besides the fundamental economic changes that
would result, geopolitical thinking about water
systems would also need to shift. Currently, there
is inherent political power in being an upstream
riparian, and thus controlling the headwaters. In
the scenario for cheap desalination, that spatial
position of power would shift from mountains to
the valleys and from the headwaters to the coast.
Many nations, such as Israel, Egypt, and Iraq,
that currently dependent on upstream neighbors
for their water supply would, by virtue of their
coastlines, suddenly find roles reversed – again,
unlikely, but plausible.
The Changing Sources of Water and
the Changing Nature of Conflict
Both the worlds of water and of conflict are
undergoing slow but steady changes that may
obviate much of the thinking in this paper.
As surface water supplies and easy-to-access
ground water sources are increasingly exploited
throughout the world, two major changes result: 1)
Quality is steadily becoming a more serious issue
to many than quantity; and 2) Water use is shifting
to less traditional sources (see, for example, Smith
and Wang 2007). Many of these sources – such
as deep fossil aquifers, waste water reclamation,
and interbasin transfers – are not restricted by the
confines of watershed boundaries, our fundamental
unit of analysis in this study. Moreover,
population and income-driven food demand will
grow exponentially in coming years, putting
unprecedented pressures on water demand.
Conflict, too, is becoming less traditional,
increasingly being driven by internal or local
pressures, or more subtle issues of poverty and
stability. The combination of changes, in water
resources and in conflict, suggest that tomorrow’s
water disputes may look very different from
today’s.
Implications for Tomorrow’s Research
Universities and research agencies can best
contribute to alleviation of the water crisis in three
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
73
major ways: (1) acquire, analyze, and coordinate
the primary data necessary for good empirical
work; (2) identify indicators of future water
disputes and/or insecurity in regions most at risk;
and (3) train tomorrow’s water managers in an
integrated fashion.
The internet’s initial mandate is still one of the
best: to allow communication between researchers
around the world to exchange information and
enhance collaboration. The surplus of primary
data currently threatens an information overload
in the developed world, while the most basic
information is often lacking in the developing
world. Data availability not only allows for greater
understanding of the physical world but, by adding
information and knowledge from the social,
economic, and political realms, indicators showing
regions at risk can be identified.
Moreover, universities are best suited to train
those who will resolve tomorrow’s water disputes,
and programs at, for example, UNESCO/IHE-
Delft, the University of Dundee, Linkopping
University, Tufts University, and Oregon State
University are allowing students to focus both
on conflict transformation and in the science
and policy of water resources. UNESCO, the
World Bank, and the Universities Partnership for
Transboundary Waters have been developing and
compiling curricula and skills-building manuals to
help train the water champions of tomorrow.
In addition, much useful research needs to be
done in areas such as the following:
1. Studies of international water resource
agreements that analyze how agreements
develop and what the internal and external
conditions are for their success;
2. Studies of the actual operations of dispute
clauses and assisted negotiations under
current water resources agreements and river
basin organizations;
3. Studies of the reasons for past successes
and failures of international water resources
dispute management;
4. Research that relates methods of managing
conflicts to the types of water resources
decisions we are likely to take. For examples,
how do regulatory versus planning versus
free market versus assisted negotiation
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approaches affect water resources decisions
such as design, implementation, construction,
operations, and maintenance? Who is
involved at what levels in these decisions?
How successful have we been in looking at
the social utility functions of each? What does
each approach tell us about equity, efficiency,
and fairness? How does each approach
generate options and trade-offs?
5. Studies that integrate theories from a variety
of disciplines, such as community building,
international negotiations, alternative dispute
resolution, and multiple objective planning in
water resource management;
6. Studies that examine the role of current
international lender and donor institutions.
To what degree may they become more
facilitators of agreement as opposed to
evaluators and/or designers of solutions? In
what ways can those institutions that deal
with water improve their behavior so as to
help prevent conflicts?
7. Research that discerns how our water
resources experiences – namely, whether we
live in humid or arid areas – in turn affect
our perceptions, and how such perceptions,
in turn, affect both our own policies and those
policies we may recommend for others;
8. Research to assess and describe where and
how intra- and international-state water issues
could threaten political and social security;
9. Examination of whether increased integration
of infrastructure between hostile neighbors
increases or decreases likelihood of conflict;
10. Study of what is minimum data necessary for
informed policy decisions; and,
11. Studies of the impacts of globalization,
privatization, and commodification of water
resources.
The history of sharing waters is a rich one,
filled with nuanced collaborations and practical
applications. Yet the resources are threatened by
dangers old – population and poverty chief among
them – and new – climate change and commodi-
fication, for example. Avoiding crises and violence
in the future will require heroic effort and political
will, and will rely heavily on the work of the vibrant
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Wolf
research community of the next 20 years.
End Notes
1. This paper draws from: “A Long Term View of
Water and Security: International Waters, National
Issues, and Regional Tensions,” presented at
a NATO Advanced Research Workshop on
Transboundary Natural Resources Governance in
Regions of Extreme Conditions, Ein Gedi, Israel,
19-21 November 2007.
2. Excluded are events where water is incidental
to a dispute, such as those concerning fishing
rights, access to ports, transportation, or river
boundaries. Also excluded are events where water
is not the driver, such as those where water is a
tool, target, or victim of armed conflict. Zeitoun
and Mirumchi (2008) argue further that events are
not either conflictive or cooperative, but rather
usually have elements of both.
Acknowledgments
I am tremendously grateful to Bill Smith, of the
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, for initiating and
fostering this collection, as I am to Chris Lant for
bringing it all together.
Author Bio and Contact Information
Aaron T. Wolf is a professor of geography in the
Department of Geosciences at Oregon State University.
His research and teaching focus is on the interaction
between water science and water policy, particularly
as related to conflict prevention and resolution. He
is co-author of Managing and Transforming Water
Conflicts (Cambridge University Press 2009), Core
and Periphery: A Comprehensive Approach to Middle
Eastern Water (Oxford University Press 1997), and
editor of Conflict Prevention and Resolution in Water
Systems (Elgar 2002). A trained mediator/facilitator,
Wolf directs the Program in Water Conflict Management
and Transformation, through which he has offered
workshops, facilitations, and mediation in basins
throughout the world (www.transboundarywaters.orst.
edu). He can be contacted at wolfa@geo.oregonstate.
edu.
References
Anderson, T. L. and Snyder, P. 1997. Water Markets:
Priming the Invisible Pump. Washington, DC: Cato
Institute.
Dinar, S., O. Odom, A. McNally, and B. Blankespoor.
2009. Climate Change and State Grievances: The
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Resiliency of International River Treaties to Increased

Water Variability. Draft (Forthcoming).

Finger, M. and J. Allouche. 2002. Water Privatisation:

Trans-National Corporations and the Re-Regulation
of the Water Industry. London and New York: Spon
Press.

Fischhendler, I. 2008. When Ambiguity in Treaty Design

Becomes Destructive: A Study of Transboundary
Water. Global Environmental Politics 8(1): 111-136.

Giordano, M., M. Giordano, and A. Wolf. 2002. The

geography of water conflict and cooperation:
Internal pressures and international manifestations.
Geographical Journal 168 (4): 293-312.

Gleick, P. 1996. Basic water requirements for human

activities: Meeting basic needs. Water International
21(2): 83–92.

Gleick, P. H. 2005. The World’s Water 2004–2005:

The Biennial Report on Freshwater Resources.
Washington, DC: Island Press.

Michel, D. and A. Pandya (eds.). 2009. Troubled Waters:

Climate Change, Hydropolitics, and Transboundary
Resources. Washington DC, Stimson Center Press.

Postel, S. 1999. Pillar of Sand: Can the Irrigation

Miracle Last? New York: Norton.

Smith Jr., W. J. and Y-D, Wang.  2007.  Conservation

rates: The best ‘new’ source of urban water during
drought. Water & Environment Journal 22 (2): 100-
116.

Svendsen, M. and N. Künkel. 2009. Water and

Adaptation to Climate Change: Consequences for
developing countries. Berlin: GTZ Press.

United States Army Corps of Engineers. 2006. Shared

Vision Planning. Institute for Water Resources.
Alexandria, VA: IWR USACE.

Wolf, A. T., J. A. Natharius, J. J. Danielson, B. S. Ward,

and J. K. Pender. 1999. International river basins of
the world. International Journal of Water Resource
Development 15(4): 387-427.

Wolf, A., S. Yoffe, and M. Giordano. 2003. International

Waters: Identifying Basins at Risk. Water Policy
5(1): 31-62.

Zeitoun, M. and N. Mirumachi. 2008. Transboundary

water interaction I: Reconsidering conflict
and cooperation. International Environmental
Agreements 8: 297-316.

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76

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 76-82, August 2009

Problem-Centered vs. Discipline-Centered Research

for the Exploration of Sustainability
William James Smith, Jr.
Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Studies, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

The western states are experiencing increasing Climate, Growth, Demand,

water supply challenges, and the continuing
drought makes these pressures more acute . . .
Chronic water shortages, explosive population
growth, over-allocated watersheds, environmental
needs and aging water facilities are combining to
create the potential for crisis and conflict over
water... Being proactive is the best approach
to prevent water conflicts… Interior Secretary
Dirk Kempthorne (Bureau of Reclamation press
release 2006).
Purveyors and Politics
The expansion of urban areas within semi-arid
and arid locations in the Lower Colorado River
Basin has stressed local ecosystems and threatens
adjoining, and even remote, ecosystems from which
water may be transferred (Briggs and Cornelius
1998, Rowell et al. 2005). For example, in rural
Nevada, the Southern Nevada Water Authority

T
he major human-environment issue in
America’s arid and semi-arid Southwest
region is urban growth. Arid region growth
is a phenomena that extends beyond the U.S., but
the American case is interesting, in that it is an
extreme scenario, and the politics regarding water
are notably multi-scale, multi-state, multi-agency,
and vitriolic in the region. In fact, Las Vegas is
the most rapidly growing metropolitan area in
the nation, and the Lower Colorado River Basin
includes two other areas that are also in the top ten
in terms of growth rate – the Phoenix, and the San
Bernardino-Riverside areas. Furthermore, the U.S.
Census Bureau projects that the states of Nevada
and Arizona will lead the nation in terms of rates of
population growth between 2005 and 2010, while
California, with southern parts of the state receiving
Lower Colorado River Basin water, will lead the
U.S. in total population increase. “Drought” has
been omnipresent in the hydropolitics of the region
in recent years, but when persons see boat slips
hanging in the air over where Lake Mead used
to be, and the lake is below 50 percent capacity,
the question now often raised by locals, scientists,
and reporters traveling internationally to cover the
issue is, “is this drought or climate change?”
wishes to withdraw water from fragile ecosystems
that ranchers have traditionally used. This is in
order to feed the growth in water demand in Las
Vegas and surrounding areas. Deacon et al. (2007)
provide a sobering article on the past extinctions
of springs in Southern Nevada due to over-
development. He also challenges the development
of rural water, primarily on the basis of impacts on
fragile desert ecosystems. Deacon is best known
for his ground-breaking work on the desert pup
fish, a highly endangered relic species of fish living
in the top of aquifers in the region.
The extreme climatic conditions of such desert
cities provides remarkable challenges to planning
for development and resource management that
sustains people and ecological systems over
generations (i.e. sustainability). This region has
never been capable of supporting permanent high-
density populations in the past, and only the birth
of specialized high-technology has the ability to
shift this paradigm. In this region, like much of
the industrialized and wealthy world, the main
water concerns focus on water quantity, especially
during drought, whereas in less-wealthy parts of
the world the focus is on quality (Smith Jr. 2009,
2008a, 2008b, 2006).

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 Problem-Centered vs. Discipline-Centered Research
Notably, the top 21 U.S. cities with the highest
average July temperatures are in Nevada and
Arizona. Moreover, current global climate model
simulations for the 21st century are unanimous in
projecting increased temperatures in the region in
the coming decades, driving increased evaporation
rates. The ensemble-mean projection of the models
also indicates stable to modestly decreasing
precipitation rates (Dettinger 2005). These
increases in evaporation and potentially small
decreases in precipitation portend an ominous tilt
in the rapidly-growing region’s hydrologic balance
toward drier conditions.1 This is compounded by
an increasing awareness that the Lower Colorado
River Basin is over-allocated (Piechota et al. 2004).
Nevertheless, preliminary research indicates that
residential conservation of water is, at best, uneven
in the basin and, in many cases, water rates are not
even oriented toward conservation (i.e. inclining
blocks as in Figure 1). There is a traditional over-
reliance on supply-side approaches indicative of
the national and international condition, and cross-
state, or basin-based, collection of demand-side
data and drought policy information is lacking.
With such burgeoning development in arid
lands over the next decades, it will be of prime
importance to investigate the impact that the
presence or dearth of conservation rates and
technologies will have on meeting future water
demand, regional capacity to cope with drought,
and to balance the needs of human and ecological
systems. All this will occur in the political milieu
Water Rate Conceptual Model
Inclining block rates
Pyramid rates
Declining block rates
Price
Uniform rates
Free - no meter
Quantity
Figure 1. Conceptual model of the major types of
water rates that encourage or discourage waste through
market signals or the lack thereof.
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
77
that is created when millions of people rapidly move
to deserts without the local water supply normally
necessary to support them. I speculate based on
the play for water that the Southern Nevada Water
Authority is making on rural water supplies, that
in such a case the economic imperative spells
trouble for the politically and economically weak.
The sociopolitical dimensions of this scenario beg
attention as much as do the strictly biophysical.
The unusual, even odd, range of possibilities
being uploaded to the public sphere to bring
water to Southern Nevada underscores the bind
that the region is in. More tame ideas to come
to the forefront have included no placement of
grass lawns when new homes are built, and heavy
promotion of xeriscape principles (i.e. use of plants
with extremely low water demand). Due to Nevada
receiving return flow credits, outdoor conservation
is inherently of greater importance than indoor
conservation, since water treated and returned to
the Colorado River results in credit.
The more radical supply-side approaches
suggested by the Southern Nevada Water Authority
include drawing water from the Mississippi
River, desalinization of ocean water from either
Mexico or California, and cloud seeding in an
already arid basin (already happening in Wyoming
in an attempt to gain Nevada credits for more
water). Such approaches are attractive because
they allow Southern Nevada to have limitless
development “cake” and eat it too. However,
cloud seeding ignores the fact that that water was
on its way to another ecosystem, and introduces
yet even more uncertainty in an era of what is
already worrisome climate change. Water from
the Mississippi, like that from the Pacific Ocean,
would require navigation of a labyrinth of physical
and legal barriers, and possibly introduce invasive
species. And piping water from far away would
require notable energy production which results in
greenhouse gas production. There are also serious
terrorism concerns with such great exposure. And,
given the current economic downturn, gathering
capital for financing such endeavors may be
challenging. Furthermore, it seems unlikely that
California would want to swap its Colorado River
water rights for local desalinated water paid by
Nevada, and building facilities on the coast would
be a political nightmare (thus, the Mexico option).
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78
However, the main point here is that all these ideas
are intended to erase barriers to limitless growth in
the desert – as if any other possibility is sacrilege.
But as long as this remains a local government
issue, all actors are likely to push for these types of
“solutions” due to their vested interest in growth,
not sustainability per se. The public sometimes
seems to think that the role of purveyors such as the
Southern Nevada Water Authority is sustainability,
but the core objective is actually to get more water,
and seemingly, control enough of the public sphere
to prevent backlash. Organizations such as this can
accrue so much clout, money, and leverage that they
can actually seem like they are the government, and
it is easy to assume a balanced agenda which may
not exist. Moreover, it has not been shown that
non-monetary values and environmental justice for
rural communities could be integrated into market-
based systems.
The conundrum of increasing demand and
development in an environment that is becoming
more arid, and the plight of rural citizens as they
attempt to maintain traditional access to water in
the face of urban physical demand and economic
and political might is not specific only to Nevada.
For example, it is well known that near Beijing,
China farmers are struggling as the water table
drops below their level of accessibility, and there
is even speculation on the potential need to move
the capital. It is also known that the South-North
Water Transfer Project is focusing on reversing the
flow of water draining south to feed the demands
of the north.
Feedback Loops and
Multidisciplinary Opportunities
Focusing again on the American Southwest,
in such scenarios, the ability to make, revisit,
and abide by agreements, and to avoid conflicts,
is strained by the highly dynamic nature of
populations, climate change, and the capacity of
high technology to serve economic agendas. In
such scenarios it is easy to see how voices for both
rural, and especially, ecosystem water needs, are
not often expressed in this fragile environment,
despite, or to take a cynical perspective, because
of, burgeoning urban water demand.2
Ironically, there is a sort of cyclical nature to
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all of this, as when millions of people move to an
area that has 125° F temperatures for a significant
time of the year, many of those persons are likely
to have their air conditioning on 24 hours a day
for months. This is the antithesis of “designing
with nature.” This kind of industrial-scale energy
consumption is what brought us to the climate
change conundrum, and which is going to make
future water demand more difficult to meet!
Clearly, traditional approaches to water resources
analysis will not suffice in such a dynamic setting.
From a researcher’s perspective, this should
provide fascinating and socially and ecologically
significant opportunities to investigate possible
future scenarios in multidisciplinary teams.
Figure 2 illustrates dynamic connections among
what might first appear to be discrete systems
(and disciplines) in the Lower Colorado River
Basin at various temporal and spatial scales. The
model foci represent real world elements of a
complex, coupled and inadequately understood
set of processes impacting the health of human
and natural systems in a manner that can only be
understood through an interdisciplinary approach.
Climate models that can be scaled to the size of the
basin generally agree with each other for the next
20-30 years, which happens to match the temporal
span of this manuscript. Thus, I set the modeling
time frame to examine scenarios up to 20 years
from now.
From left-to-right in Figure 2, there is an
expected link between climate and flow in the
Lower Colorado River Basin and river flow is
also a source of atmospheric moisture (its impact
debatable). Flow impacts the amount of water
available for residential demand, and demand,
of course, impacts the amount of flow at specific
points in the system. Residential demand has the
additional impact of altering the flow available
for ecological systems and, if such policies as
minimum flow standards or flows regulated by the
Endangered Species Act are in place, then eco-
logical systems, in turn, can impact the amount of
water humans can draw from the physical system.
The water made available to both people and nature
has direct impacts for economic sustainability,
as many economic activities, such as the silicon
industry being wooed by Las Vegas, require water.
Working down and back to the left in the figure, it
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Problem-Centered vs. Discipline-Centered Research
“NORMAL”
ATMPR/CLM
FACTORS
ATMPR/CLM FLOW
(& CLM CHG)
LAND USE
LAND COVER
Figure 2. Dynamic interplay of human and biophysical factors regarding water and
climate change in the Lower Colorado River Basin and its subsystems.
is true that limits to water availability can impact
growth potential (perhaps providing grounds for
massive cross-basin transfers of water) and, at
the same time, urban growth impacts demand.
Demographic change in the next 20 years, both in
terms of total numbers of people and composition
(elasticity of demand varies by income level and
other factors), will in return, drive both residential
water demand and changes in land use and land
cover. In addition, people move to, and build in,
places in part due to their perceptions of climate
and resource availability. Those perceptions may
be plastic, but the extent to which people’s related
preferences and perceptions change over time in
extremely arid environments is poorly understood.
Nonetheless, climate regimes impact development.
Conversely, alterations on the surface of the Lower
Colorado River Basin that will occur with large
demographic shifts can be modeled using a GIS
and thus provide inputs to atmospheric models
to examine potential impacts on local climate
– bringing the reader back to the starting point in
the figure.
Discovering ways to make the dynamic
relationship between these elements clear will
advance characterization of the flows of dynamic
and multidimensional changes in physical and
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
79
NATURE/
ECOL SYS
RESIDENTIAL ECON OPT
WATER ECON
DEMAND SUSTBLTY
URBAN
GROWTH
human systems to occur in the rapidly evolving
Lower Colorado River Basin over the next 20
years. In addition to the balance between these
elements and the magnitude of their relationships
with one another, it is fertile ground to investigate
the gestalt effect of these changes on the continued
viability of regional development as a whole, and
the appropriate level and character of governance
from the local to federal scales. Many related
questions, such as how effective local regulation
can be when it seems everyone in places such as
Las Vegas has a vested interest in the continuation
of massive growth, go beyond water per se, but
deserve intellectual treatment beyond the local
public sphere which is highly biased.
A concern is that vulnerability in the
aforementioned complex set of interacting
human and natural systems will be enhanced by
an imbalance caused by extreme development.
Imbalance, for example, can be framed in terms
of growth, or as change in level of water use by a
human or ecological system that leaves inadequate
water for the sustenance of the other system(s).
Or, an alternative perspective on vulnerability is
that there are as of yet unknown “tipping points”
for the elements in Figure 2, beyond which the
system cannot supply water resources to people
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and ecosystems without significant changes in
behavior.
Scenario Models to Evaluate
Sustainability
Behavior could be changed to an as-of-now
untested degree during periods of extreme water
scarcity through regional application of drought
demand rates, though the question of what is
drought, and what is climate change, matters, as
it seems as if the impact of drought demand rates
is not infinite, given that water is essential and still
relatively cheap. What would be worthwhile would
be to project population growth, water demand,
and potential for implementation of drought
demand rates for the next 20 years under several
plausible scenarios of climate, recharge, elasticity,
growth, and allocations, and include to the degree
feasible scenarios of conservation technology and
landscapes (e.g. xeriscaping, land retirement, turf
removal). Then use the results of these analyses to
answer, better yet, visualize, perhaps geovisualize,
questions that include the following:
1. Under what conditions and when might
the system become incapable of delivering
adequate water?
2. To what extent might growth impact water
availability and sustainability through both
demand and climate change?
3. What role can water conservation-oriented
rates, conservation landscaping and
technology implementation play in buoying
the systems through times of predicted
greatest water scarcity…and what is the
reasonable limit as to how far this might
stretch viability given that growth has no cap
in the U.S.?
It is tradition that industrialized societies
recognize maximization of capture and use (not
necessarily wise-use) of resources, and increase
in scale of physical development on a landscape,
as indicators of progress (“conquering” nature).
But is there a more healthy way to frame arid
and semi-arid urban development in terms of the
aforementioned relationships? A reexamination of
these relationships seems wise, and the purpose
of any such reexamination should be to seek
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Smith
harmony between the systems manifest in Figure
2, providing an opportunity for sustainability and
avoidance of damaging feedbacks for humans
and nature in extreme conditions for present and
future generations. And, in the process of pursuing
such knowledge, it is important to inquire as to
how certain we can be of our findings, and what
information would decrease uncertainty and risk.
These aforementioned questions will require
integration of our knowledge across the disciplines
– and require us to extend beyond our comfort
level for true collaboration and synthesis beyond
the traditional water resources scope.
Promoting Problems and Teams
Over Disciplines
Finally, this leads me to consider the role of
geographers, as well as those in environmental
studies, and others who claim that their strength is
in their multidisciplinary grounding, team approach
and breadth of their skill-sets. The next 20 years in
arid lands such as the Lower Colorado River Basin
will provide an ample platform for them to prove
their worth in this highly dynamic area requiring
greater multidisciplinary treatment.
Advancing this argument further, if researchers
are willing to concentrate on problem-centered
approaches to delineating and attacking research
questions and problems, rather than staying
within and defending encroachment on their
disciplinary silos, then multidisciplinary teams
can be configured to advance praxis in scenarios
such as that detailed above. A problem-centered
approach is the best hope for allowing researchers
to be strong in their area, and to avoid inefficient
turf battles by allowing persons to focus on their
own specialty areas, while allowing the blend of
contributions to produce an effective gestalt-effect
where there is shared intellectual ground.
University administration, however, must
produce internal systems that reward this type of
“behavior,” and the resulting collaborative grant
writing and publications that may fall out of the
scope of traditional approaches. Systems that
only reward single or first author publishing in a
narrow scope of journals will retard advancement
of the type of multidimensional research framed in
Figure 2. In this case, advancements in knowledge
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Problem-Centered vs. Discipline-Centered Research
will happen in a highly uneven manner between
subareas, with significant data hoarding, and sub-
boundaries between applications (i.e. studies of
recharge that do not connect to demand to evaluate
overall water sustainability). The internal rules
to the academic game must be set to allow the
creative energies of researchers, and synergies
between them, to rise to meet the complexity of
the highly dynamic settings of places such as the
Lower Colorado River Basin. In that sense, the
barriers to advancing water resources through a
sustainability framework may be as much internal
as external – with mitigating internal challenges
to forming multidisciplinary teams arguably being
a prerequisite to a “vibrant research agenda” in
places such as the Lower Colorado River Basin.
This seems to be especially true if researchers also
endeavor for their pursuit of emerging research
agendas to make a positive impact on the ground,
as well as in the literature.
End Notes
1. This is presently being monitored, modeled and
“stepped-down” to be run in hydrologic and other
models by the team working on the 5-year NSF-
funded project titled “Nevada Infrastructure
for Climate Change Science, Education, and
Outreach” – of which the author is the policy
and outreach component lead).
2. For models balancing human demand, supply,
ecological demand, equity for low income
customers, revenue neutrality, and efficiency
during drought using demand-side methods,
please see Smith Jr. and Wang 2007, and for
step-by-step detail see Wang et al. 2005.
Author Bio and Contact Information
William J. Smith, Jr. focuses his research and teaching at
the nexus of technology-environment-society relations.
He has an interdisciplinary background, with particular
expertise regarding management of watersheds and
“sustainability” praxis. His work incorporates a variety
of modeling techniques, and investigation of underlying
causes of changes in relations between humans and their
environment utilizing political economy and political
ecology lenses. His other areas of interest include
linking biodiversity and cultural preservation, climate
change, conservation, environmental governance and
justice, neoliberalism, hazards, less-wealthy countries,
and small islands. His applied international research is
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
81
in the Western Pacific Islands and the Philippines. He
can be contacted at bill.smith@unlv.edu.
References
Briggs, M. K. and Cornelius, S. 1998. Opportunities for
ecological improvement along the lower Colorado
River and delta. Wetlands 18 (4): 513-529.
Deacon, J., A. E. Williams, C. Deacon Williams, J. E.
Williams. 2007. Fueling Population Growth in Las
Vegas: How Large-scale Groundwater Withdrawal
Could Burn Regional Biodiversity. BioScience
Magazine 57 (8): 688–698.
Dettinger, M. 2005. From climate-change spaghetti
to climate-change distributions for 21st Century
California. San Francisco Estuary and Watershed
Science 3 (1): 4.
Piechota, T. C., Hidalgo, H., Timilsena, J., and G.
Tootle. 2004. Western U.S. drought: How bad is it?
EOS Transactions 85 (32): 301-308.
Rowell, K., Flessa, K. W. and Dettman, D. L. 2005. The
importance of Colorado River flow to nursery habitats
of the Gulf Corvina (Cynoscion othonopterus).
Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences
62: 2874-2885.
Smith Jr., W. J. (Forthcoming) 2009. Improving access
to safe drinking water in rural, remote, and least-
wealthy small islands: Non-traditional methods
in Chuuk State, Federated States of Micronesia.
International Journal of Environmental Technology
and Management. Accepted for publication in
volume 10.
Smith Jr., W. J. 2008a. The place of rural, remote and
least wealthy small islands in international water
development: The nexus of geography-technology-
sustainability in Chuuk State, Federated States of
Micronesia. The Geographical Journal 174 (3):
251-268.
Smith Jr., W. J. 2008b. Focus section on “Linkages
between water conservation and human rights” and
edited 2 sections in Manual on the Right to Water and
Sanitation. Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions,
Right to Water Programme, American Association
for Advancement of Science – Science and Human
Rights Programme, Swiss Agency for Development
and Cooperation, United Nations Human Settlements
Programme (UN-HABITAT Water, Sanitation and
Infrastructure Branch). http://www.cohre.org/store/
attachments/RWP-Manual-water.pdf.
UCOWR
82 Smith

Smith Jr., W. J. and Wang, Y. D. 2007. Conservation rates:

the best ‘new’ source of urban water during drought.
Water & Environment Journal 22 (2): 100-116.

Smith Jr., W. J. 2006. Refereed conference hosted by

the Geological Society of America and 21 major
governmental and research institutions that guide
U.S. drought policy and science titled, Poster on
Managing Drought and Water Scarcity in Vulnerable
Environments: Creating a Roadmap for Change in
the United States. Longmont, Colorado.

Wang, Y. D., W .J. Smith Jr., and J. B. Byrne. 2005.

Water Conservation-Oriented Rates: Strategies to
Extend Supply, Promote Equity, & Meet Minimum
Flow Levels. American Water Works Association.
Denver, CO. (see AWWA Web site.)

UCOWR Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education

 83

Universities Council on Water Resources

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
Issue 142, Pages 83-88, August 2009

Geographic Research in Water Resources:

A Vibrant Research Agenda for the Next 20 Years
William James Smith, Jr.
Assistant Professor, Department of Environmental Studies, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

T Technology and Data

he objective of this issue of The Journal
of Contemporary Water Research and
Education on a “Vibrant Research Agenda
for the Next 20 Years for Water Resources
Research” has been to ask the contributing authors
to stretch their imaginations, eschew a mere
recitation of what they have done in their notable
careers, and instead deeply consider what may
make for a compelling future in water resources
research. In bringing together these diverse and
highly respected authors, each with a distinct set
of methods and theoretical orientation, this volume
has spanned many subareas of investigation. The
gestalt effect of these relatively brief but insightful
pieces should make this volume ideal for seminar
discussion. Finally, we hope that we have succeeded
in our attempt to capitalize on the momentum
built over the past two Annual Meetings of the
Association of American Geographers, at which
we have arranged four future-tense panels, and that
this work is a service to the academic community.
Although there is great diversity in the content
offered by the contributors, at least seven major
threads run through multiple authors. The areas that
the authors keyed-in on across their subdisciplines
are: 1) Technology, especially cyberinfrastructure;
2) Data synthesis across disciplines; 3) The
role or non-role of history in future analysis; 4)
Vulnerability; 5) Regional analysis; 6) Mitigation,
and 7) Governance and environmental justice.
Below I expand on the omnipresent issues of
technology and data to synthesize some salient
points from this special volume, and make an
attempt to chart a potentially fruitful course
forward that expands on some of the author’s ideas
regarding the need for regional research.
The close link between scientific research and
technical invention appears to be a new factor in
the nineteenth century. According to Mumford,
“the principal initiatives came, not from the
inventor-engineer, but from the scientist who
established the general law.” The scientist took
cognizance both of the new raw materials which
were available and of the new human needs which
had to be met. Then he deliberately oriented his
research toward a scientific discovery that could
be applied technically. And he did this out of
simple curiosity or because of definite commercial
and industrial demands. Pasteur, for instance,
was encouraged in his bacteriological research
by wine producers and silkworm growers. …In
the twentieth century, this relationship between
scientific research and technical invention resulted
in the enslavement of science to technique. (Ellul
1954).
When French thinker Jacques Ellul wrote in
1954 about what he referred to as autonomous
technology, he critically evaluated the capacity
of technology to create the conditions for its own
proliferation and dominance of both our scientific
and non-scientific lives (e.g. the clock). Even if
one were to not take the pointed perspective of
Ellul on such matters, undoubtedly, today science
and technology are generally seen as mutually
dependent on one another.
Given this, it is not surprising that the authors in
this volume, ranging in subareas of interest from
infomatics to history, share in common a call for
greater technological connectivity, especially cyber
infrastructure. Hirschboeck’s work highlighted
that researchers need more and better ways to track
change and tie together social and biophysical data

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

84 Smith
as we become more aware of dynamic coupling. It
seems nearly universal among the authors that the
translation of different types of data and information
into forms that lend themselves to integration is a
major challenge moving forward.
If we are to wrap our minds around what I would
argue is an over-developed planet, socioeconomic
and biophysical data must find a way to connect,
moving past historical and disciplinary boundaries,
but without losing their “meat” in the translation.
Hirschboeck notes that the issue of vulnerability
and how to adapt to climate change may provide
momentum for this endeavor. Mackay and Band
point out that ecohydrologic research has also
built-up momentum for synthesis of diverse data.
But then there is a need that several of our authors
point out for the technological capacity to support
complex modeling and geo-visualize outputs, and
thus, hydroinfomatics focuses explicitly on the
evolution of information technologies.
Allan James notes that water data needs to be
integrated with global environmental change fields
of inquiry. He refers to the old adage of thinking
globally but acting locally, especially by watershed,
noting that it still represents an effective way
forward when it comes to theoretical integration
and on-the-ground improvements in water quality.
Mackay and Band consider issues of scaling up
and down data, and make the point that investment
in cyber-infrastructure will move research beyond
case studies by integrating combinations of data sets.
However, even a cursory overview of technologies
they suggest, such as flux towers and phenology
networks, highlights the issue of cost. Thus, it
occurs to me that the present focus of the National
Science Foundation on cyber-infrastructure is in
line with what many of our authors believe is vital
for moving the field of water resources forward.
What I believe complicates this movement
towards integrating global data sets is as follows. As
Wescoat points out, at least from a U.S. perspective,
little comparative international work is done. This
may be a result of what is valued in classrooms, or
because this work is difficult to fund, or because
technology may push us down a narrower path; it is
difficult to say. However, the point is that if we are
to study global environmental change, with all due
respect to Luoheng Han and the other authors that
referred to the potential of remote sensing and GIS,
UCOWR
we need “boots on the ground” and partnerships
that are ongoing so that we can collect long-term
data and information and learn from each other as
we make advances – not just short-term field trips
to parachute in to collect data and take it away, or
satellite images. Mackay and Band hope for global
coverage across biomes, but this is impractical
without partnerships. Anything akin to the Long-
Term Ecological Research projects in America is
only possible if healthy partnerships with people
of all types across the globe are fostered. This
point brings me to Wolf’s work, noting that his
data show that water can often be more of a force
for collaboration than conflict. For researchers to
play a role, however, they need to be able to find
support – a mere few weeks of travel money is
hardly the institutional commitment necessary in
a globalizing world. This type of commitment is
essential to social and biophysical scientists, but
does not always fit the definition of cutting-edge
science. Researchers need funding institutions to
think outside of this box to free up creative energies
for collaboration.
Another important (though untreated by our
contributors) factor in collecting global data
and information for synthesis through cyber-
infrastructure is technology transfer. If global
climate change is the threat that our contributors
assume it to be, and if global environmental
change data requires inputs from around the earth,
then the building of appropriate infrastructure has
to go far beyond academia to the different biomes
of the world. This again means partnering for
capacity building technology transfer to least-
wealthy countries, including working with poor
non-scientists (Smith, Jr. 2009, 2008a, b). It also
means spending resources on the aforementioned
social and biophysical data synthesis, but doing so
across cultures and time.
As Rajagopal notes, rescuing old data, doing
quality control on it, finding ways to convert it so
that the subareas of data “speak to each other,” and
finding ways to communicate data and information
to positively influence policy, is a major endeavor
– never mind across cultures. Nevertheless, what
could be more efficient than partnering for this
mission? However, this will be challenge, since
many funding agencies reward only new data
being collected – so there must be clever ways
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Geographic Research in Water Resources
around this barrier. In fact, several authors pointed
out the value of paleo research, but in an era of
anthropogenically-fueled rapid planetary change,
would it not be madness to ignore decades or more
of data and general knowledge around the globe
and also not establish on the ground networks of
people – not just sensors?
Research Funding
This brings me to the point of discussing what
research will be funded and which research will
not. Speaking only for myself, science can be
a bit of a shell game. On one hand, science is
often portrayed as a neutral knowledge seeking
endeavor – what are the properties of water, etc.
On the other hand, when institutions such as the
National Science Foundation shift major funding
for upcoming research to fields such as climate
change, the momentum comes from the perception
of a crisis facing society that researchers must step-
up to face – and of course, some will follow the
money as much as their sincere research needs, due
to the various reward systems in different academic
institutions. (All this is funded with public money
in the first place.) When it is convenient, the
ethical card is played, when it seems prestigious to
do so, science is above it all. For someone who is a
newly minted Ph.D., and who must take the baton
to some extent over the next 20 years, this can be
maddening. Some of the most fruitful research
will be that which is properly funded, but knowing
the priorities of major funding institutions is not
always straight-forward, and those missions change
in subtle ways that can help along or kill proposals.
So, “action science,” and “translational science,”
etc. sound good on paper at certain periods, but
what matters is actually the panel of reviewer’s
comments and the assumptions they make.
Of course, in a perfect national funding world
one can make a cutting-edge contribution to science
and as a by-product, do the world some good while
cranking out high profile refereed publications. For
example, Wang, Harrington, Jr. and Montz all offer
content in this volume that can satisfy both needs in
interesting ways. And the frame that Christopher
Lant offers through ecological economics speaks
to human needs through “nature’s services,” but
also has the potential for the type of conventional
scientific rigor that gets good work funded. But
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
85
the problem, it seems to me, is that there is just as
vibrant a research agenda to be had pursuing the
political ecology and political economy, as well
as historical lines of inquiry that Swyngedouw,
Wescoat and myself point to, but this research
is simply different than what many institutions
fund as neutral and primarily quantitative water
resources research. If Lant was right to point out
that economists have a predilection for putting a
price or value on everything, and if scientists focus
on quantification, then this highlights the potential
for this important qualitative knowledge to keep
slipping through most people’s grasps – and for
mistakes to keep on being repeated in areas such as
water, sanitation, and appropriate technology. The
linkages to global and local environmental justice
concerns are obvious.
Ethics and Science
If, having read this volume and the ubiquitous
references to climate change, pollutant loads,
coupled systems, alterations in land use and land
cover, etc., the reader did not comprehend the
vital importance in tracing and potentially having
an impact on the political, historic, cultural, and
economic drivers of changes in the atmosphere,
surface and ground water, then I would be at a loss.
Political economic and technological drivers and
power relations are the root causes of the major
issues we will struggle with for the next 20 years.
In fact, many of those exciting research areas, like
climate change and predicting when people will be
flooded off of their islands, are actually problems
for us and future generations, not neutral objects
to be admired at a academic distance. To put it in
medical terms, the earth has been made ill, and
these water resources problems are symptoms of an
overall condition. Interdisciplinary collaboration
is the primary way forward through issues this
complex.
Again, the majority of our authors point to a need
to synthesize data across the social and biophysical
realms, and to build cyber-infrastructure and other
technologies to support this effort. That sounds
nice. But, if funding goes only into specialized
pockets of research, then that reward system will
drive much research that way for many years to
come. If research is too narrow, distanced from
real person’s problems, and infrastructure and
UCOWR
86
capacity building is limited to the home country
of the funding agency, then we will rise to
meet our collective global water “crisis” with a
fragmented, inward looking, scientifically valid
and technologically impressive, but in terms of
humanity, remarkably empty, research agenda.
A possible way forward through this labyrinth
of competing needs, skill-sets and agendas is
actually something geographers should be quite
good at, and people in environmental studies could
also offer frames for as well. And, if researchers
in the next 20 years are funded in a way that does
more than pay lip service to the concept while
keeping old research silo standards, it might just
be fruitful.
Regional Studies
As Wescoat inferred, a resurgence in learning
about regions, not just studying particular narrow
themes (e.g., arsenic in water) across the globe,
could lead to deeper understanding of phenomena
that occur in common space or are linked in ways
not normally understood through more narrow
analysis. This is not a shot at specialized and
narrow knowledge, as indeed this is necessary as
well. However, access to deep and medium to
long-term social and biophysical data sets based
on regions would allow collaboration to examine
relationships in a holistic way. Take for example
shallow water fringing coral reefs in Pohnpei,
Federated States of Micronesia. Too much silt on
a reef reduces light and damages the structure,
which impacts the attending ecosystem and the
capacity of the space to produce food, medicine,
and money from the sale of fish, and so forth.
Knowledge of shallow water reefs is essential, one
must have deep (arguably narrow) knowledge of
the biology of reefs to understand how they work
and what impacts them. Nevertheless, it may
be the distant linkages to the markets in Europe
that are driving persons to cut down the forests to
plant sakau (Figure 1), which causes erosion and
may impact aquifers as well. Sakau also has deep
ceremonial meaning to local people as a drink, so
it is grown and other vegetation is removed for
that purpose as well. So to understand the reef
problem fully one must understand changes in land
cover, trade linkages and local custom, especially
if mitigation is an objective. In this example, deep
UCOWR
Smith
Figure 1. Sakau ceremony in Pohnpe, Federated States
of Micronesia.
regional knowledge across social and biophysical
phenomena is essential.
In thinking about regional studies it is good to
go back to the author’s contributions. As the issues
that Harrington, Jr., James, and Montz point out,
such as population grown, urbanization, overuse
of finite resources, and climate-based hazards,
grow in specter, researchers have at least two
major needs. First, there is the aforementioned
collection and synthesis of social and biophysical
data through what will to a great extent be global
cyber-infratructure, supported by international
partnerships with both wealthy and least-wealthy
countries. This must occur in all biomes to assist in
translating the data and information and refreshing
it. This will also help the data and information to
be properly translated so as to talk to each other
and have a gestalt effect. And, as Wescoat points
out for areas like South Asia, and in my own
experience doing research in the Federated States
of Micronesia, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) offer an alternative to working exclusively
with slow-moving, and as Ophuls and Boyan,
Jr. (Dryzek and Schlosberg 2004) point out,
compromise-laden governments that “muddle
through.” There are also the issues of trying to
partner with corrupt governments. So, supporting
civil society in such places may be both interesting
and productive, and garner grassroots support.
New Media, Social Networking and
Communication
One piece of this puzzle is the type of formal
research partnerships we are normally familiar
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
 Geographic Research in Water Resources
with, in combination with cyber-infrastructure
capacity building, which can be self-sustaining if
it also meets local priorities. But another exciting
part of the puzzle might be exploring the potential
of social networking and new media. If deep social
and biophysical data sets and information are what
is needed from across the globe and by region, then
bringing in civil society and the layperson into the
data collection process might be one way to be light
on one’s feet and increase the number of human and
biophysical “sensors” around the globe. Imagine
Twitter being used to send data, phones equipped
with global positioning systems, webcam networks,
citizen scientists, especially NGOs getting modest
support to do what they want to do anyway, such
as monitor the health of their reefs, all streaming in
new data and information. This is not a replacement
for all traditional ways of studying water, but it
could be that social networking may have matured
to the point in the next 20 years that the volume of
human and data networks could significantly add
to the data arsenal available to those interested in
water resources issues, especially as they pertain to
global environmental change.
Second, there is a strong need to translate data
and information and communicate it well so as
to potentially impact the local and international
policies and individual choices that are driving the
problems on the research agenda in the first place.
Linkages to behavior and governance must be
elucidated to move the research agenda forward –
and this requires regional knowledge beyond water,
such as knowing the local culture. Here there is so
much to select from in terms of exciting research
questions related to ground and surface water,
plants, infrastructure, consumption (demand-side),
economics synergies between types of resource
uses, law, the right to water for different purposes,
appropriate technology, sociology, class, gender,
cyber-infrastructure methodology, and so forth.
When examined from this perspective, the options
are so vast as to be almost overwhelming.
Conclusion
Data, information and technology are necessary
for the study of water resources, and so they have
been the focus of much of this discussion. However,
in considering paths forward in pursuing a vibrant
future water resources research agenda there will
Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
87
be no substitute for thinking about linkages – this
is where the action will be. And, without a doubt,
this will require those studying water resources to
connect with others outside of the water resources
realm to maximize their impact.
Acknowledgements
We wish to acknowledge with special thanks
the patience and effort of Chris Lant in bringing
this volume together. Thanks also to the Water
Resources Specialty Group for supporting the
panels that brought this special volume to fruition.
On a personal note, I would like to acknowledge
my wife Sarah, and William James Smith, Sr.,
William III, and our newborn baby James. No one
enjoys water more wholeheartedly than children.
Author Bio and Contact Information
William J. Smith, Jr. focuses his research and teaching at
the nexus of technology-environment-society relations.
He has an interdisciplinary background, with particular
expertise regarding management of watersheds and
“sustainability” praxis. His work incorporates a variety
of modeling techniques, and investigation of underlying
causes of changes in relations between humans and their
environment utilizing political economy and political
ecology lenses. His other areas of interest include
linking biodiversity and cultural preservation, climate
change, conservation, environmental governance and
justice, neoliberalism, hazards, less-wealthy countries,
and small islands. His applied international research is
in the Western Pacific Islands and the Philippines. He
can be contacted at bill.smith@unlv.edu.
References
Dryzek, J. S. and D. Schlosberg. 2004. The American
Political Economy II: The Non-Politics of Laissez
Faire, In Debating the Earth: The Environmental
Politics Reader 2nd ed. W. P. Ophuls and A. S. Boyan
Jr. pp. 191-206.
Ellul, Jacques. 1964. The Technological Society. New
York: Vintage Books.
Smith, W. J. Jr. 2009. Improving access to safe drinking
water in rural, remote, and least-wealthy small islands:
Non-traditional methods in Chuuk State, Federated
States of Micronesia. International Journal of
Environmental Technology and Management 10 (2):
167-189.
Smith, W. J. Jr. 2008a. A Geographic Analysis of
UCOWR
88 Smith

the Impact of Scale and Isolation on Coping with

Hazards on Small Islands. Technology and Society,
Journal of the IEEE Society on Social Implications
of Technology 27 (3): 39-47.

Smith, W. J. Jr. 2008b. The place of rural, remote

and least wealthy small islands in international water
development: The nexus of geography-technology-
sustainability in Chuuk State, Federated States of
Micronesia.” The Geographical Journal 174 (3):
251-268.

UCOWR Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education

 89

UCOWR BOARD OF DIRECTORS/COMMITTEE CHAIRS 2009-2012

PRESIDENT BOARD MEMBERS

Michael Barber Joseph J. Delfino Reagan M. Waskom

State of Washington Water Research Ctr.
Washington State University
PO Box 643002
Pullman, WA 99164-3002
(509) 335-5531; FAX: 335-1590
meb@wsu.edu
Dept of Environmental Engineering
Sciences
A.P. Black Hall Box 116450
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-6450
(352) 392-9377; FAX (352)392-3076
jdelf@eng.ufl.edu
Colorado Water Institute
E102 Engineering
1033 Campus Delivery
Colorado State University
Fort Collins CO 85023-1033
(970) 491-6308; FAX: (970) 491-1636
Reagan.Waskom@colostate.edu

PRESIDENT-ELECT
Paula L. Sturdevant Rees
Mass WRRC, Blaisdell House
310 Hicks Way
University of Massachusetts
Amherst MA 01003
(413) 545-5528; FAX: 545-2304
rees@ecs.umass.edu
Lynette de Silva
Program in Water Conflict Management & Gary Woodard
Transformation SAHRA
Department of Geosciences Marshall Bldg. Room 549D
Oregon State University 845 N. Park Avenue
104 Wilkinson Hall University of Arizona
Corvallis, OR 97331-5506 Tucson AZ 85721
(541) 737-7013; Fax: (541) 737-1200 (520) 626-5399; FAX: 626-4479
desilval@geo.oregonstate.edu gwoodard@sahra.arizona.edu

Past President
Brian H. Hurd
Jay R. Lund Agricultural Economics and Agricultural
Civil and Environmental Engineering Business
One Shields Avenue New Mexico State University
University of California, Davis MSC 3169, Box 30003
Davis, CA 95616, Las Cruces, NM 88003-8003
(530) 752-5671; FAX: 752-7872 (575) 646-2674; FAX: 646-3522
jrlund@ucdavis.edu bhurd@nmsu.edu

Executive Director Mac McKee

Utah Water Research Laboratory YEARS OF BOARD SERVICE
Christopher L. Lant Utah State University
UCOWR Headquarters/Geography 1600 Canyon Road, UMC 8200 July 2007 – July 2010
4543 Faner Hall – Mail Code 4526 Logan, Utah 84322-8200 Michael Barber
Southern Illinois University (435) 797-3188; FAX: 797-3663 Ari Michelsen
1000 Faner Drive mac.mckee@usu.edu Reagan Waskom
Carbondale, Illinois 62901
(618) 453-6020 FAX: 453-2671 July 2008 – July 2011
clant@siu.edu Ari Michelsen Brian Hurd
Texas AgriLife Research Center Paula Sturdevant Rees
Texas A&M University System Gary Woodard
COMMITTEE CHAIRS 1380 A&M Circle
El Paso TX 79927 July 2009 – July 2012
Awards (915) 859-9111; FAX: 859-1078 Joe Delfino
Jay Lund a-michelsen@tamu.edu Lynette de Silva
Conference Program Mac McKee
Michael Barber
Membership
Joe Delfino

Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education UCOWR

90

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Tufts U. The Ivanhoe Foundation
U.S. Military Academy Los Alamos National Laboratory
Utah State U. National Water Quality Monitoring Council (USGS)
Virginia Polytechnic Inst. Sandia National Laboratories
Washington State U. University of Calgary, Canada
Yale U. University of New England, Australia
U. of Alaska
U. of Arizona

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BENEFITS OF UCOWR MEMBERSHIP

The Universities Council on Water Resources (UCOWR) is an association of over 100 member universities, organizations,
and individuals leading in education, research and public service in water resources. Benefites from membership include:

Advocacy

UCOWR is dedicated to developing new science and preparing leaders and technologies for the use, management,
and protection of water resources. UCOWR delegates are advocates for the incorporation of contemporary issues and
methodologies in the classroom, research laboratories, and the field. Evolving academic programs in water resources
promoted by UCOWR are excellent curriclum models for other interdisciplinary programs.

Leadership

UCOWR’s officers and member delegates represent the nation’s leading academic professionals dedicated to expanding
the knowledge base and training water resources professionals. Each year, graduates of UCOWR member universities
constitute the majority of new water resources professionals establishing careers. UCOWR encourages delegates
to assume leadership roles withibn their institutions and supports this through electronic and personal networking
services. In addition, the organizational structure of UCOWR provides opportunities for leadership development through
participation in committees and on the Board of Directors.

Professional Growth

UCOWR is the only professional organization embracing the entire range of disciplines involved in water resources
and serving serving academic institutions and their faculties. This diversity provides the holistic perspective necessary
to solve today’s complex water problems and to train the nation’s future water resources leaders. UCOWR promotes
the professional growth of member delegates in order to enhance their impact and effectiveness within the community
of water resources professionals. The Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education, a UCOWR publication,
presents research to encourage dialog on contemporary water issues to a degree not afforded by other water-related
journals. UCOWR’s annual conference provides a forum for exchanges of information in an atmosphere conducive
to open discussion and network building among individuals and institutions. The achievements of outstanding water
resource professionals are recognized through the UCOWR awards program, including the Warren A. Hall Medal,
Ph.D. Dissertation Awards, and the Education and Public Service Award.

Other Benefits

Each university member institution receives

• Hardcopy and electronic subscriptions to the Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
• Reduced registration fees for staff and students at the annual conference
• A voice in the governance of UCOWR (1 lead delegate and up to 7 additional voting delegates)

Affiliate and Individual members enjoy

• Hardcopy and electronic subscriptions to the Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education
• Reduced registration fees at the annual conference

4543 Faner Hall — Mail Code 4526, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 1000 Faner Drive, Carbondale, Illinois 62901
Phone: (618) 536-7571, Fax: (618) 453-2671, E-mail: ucowr@siu.edu, www.ucowr.org

For membership forms, please visit our website www.ucowr.org.

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FRIENDS OF UCOWR
In appreciation of their vision and leadership in the advancement of Water Resources Research and Education, the
following individuals have been named “Friends of UCOWR.”

1984 1987 1994 2003

Ernest F. Brater Wade H. Andrews Robert D. Varrin Lisa Bourget
Norman H. Brooks John D. Hewlett Henry J. Vaux, Jr. C. Mark Dunning
Ven Te Chow Gerard A. Rohlich Tamim Younos
Nephi A. Christensen Dan M. Wells 1995
Robert E. Dils Jon F. Bartholic 2004
Warren A. Hall 1988 M. Wayne Hall Ari Michelsen
John W. Harshbarger Merwin P. Dougal William L. Powers Margaret Skerly
A.T. Ingersoll John C. Frey Walter V. Wendler
John F. Kennedy Daniel J. Wiersma 1996
Carl E. Kindsvater L. Douglas James 2005
Emmett M. Laursen 1989 David H. Moreau Lynne Lewis
Arno T. Lenz Daniel D. Evans Howard S. Peavy
Ray K. Linsley 2006
Walter L. Moore 1990 1997 Mark Limbaugh
Dean F. Peterson Henry P. Caulfield Faye Anderson New Mexico
Sol D. Resnick Maynard M. Hufschmidt Patrick L. Brezonik Water Resources
Verne H. Scott Absalom W. Snell Theodore M. Schad Research Institute
David K. Todd Yacov Y. Haimes
Calvin C. Warnick 1991 2007
M. Gordon Wolman Eugene D. Eaton 1998 Paul Bourget
William B. Lord Peter E. Black Gary S. Johnson
1985 Willliam R. Walker Helen M. Ingram Michael O’Neill
Bernard B. Berger Gilbert F. White
William Butcher 1992 1999
Ernest Engelbert J. Ernest Flack John S. Jackson 2008
David H. Howells Gerald E. Galloway, Jr. Kyle E. Schilling Penny Firth
William Whipple John C. Guyon Robert C. Ward Don Rice
Ernest T. Smerdon Alan Vaux
1986 Warren Viessman, Jr. 2000
Leonard Dworsky William H. Funk 2009
Peter Eagleson 1993 Gretchen Rupp
Benjamin Ewing Marvin T. Bond 2001 M. J. Nehasil
George Maxey Glenn E. Stout Charles W. Howe Ronald D. Lacewell
George Smith Michele Zinn
2002
Duane D. Baumann

WARREN A. HALL MEDAL HONOREES

William Butcher - 1993 Miguel A. Marino - 2002
Warren “Bud” Viessman, Jr. - 1994 Charles W. “Chuck” Howe - 2003
Gilbert White - 1995 Robert A. Young - 2004
Richard S. Engelbrecht - 1996 Henry J. Vaux, Jr. - 2005
Yacov Y. Haimes - 1997 Robert C. Ward - 2006
Neil S. Grigg - 1998 Patrick L. Brezonik - 2007
William W-G. Yeh - 1999 Peter Rogers - 2008
Daniel Peter Loucks -2000 Gerald E. Galloway - 2009
Vernon L. Snoeyink - 2000

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Past Issues of the Journal of Contemporary Water Research and

Education and Water Resources Update
Issue 142, August 2009. A Vibrant Agenda for the Next 20 Years of Water Resources Research.
William James Smith, Jr. and Graham A. Tobin. (Eds.)
Issue 141, March 2009. Three Years after Katrina: Restoring and Protecting New Orleans and
Coastal Louisiana. Gerald E. Galloway, University of Maryland. (Ed.)
Issue 140, September 2008. Complexity and Uncertainty in Water Resources Management.
John Tracy, University of Idaho. (Ed.)
Issue 139, June 2008. A Creative Critique of U.S. Water Education. Charles “Chuck” Howe,
University of Colorado-Boulder. (Ed.)
Issue 138, April 2008. The Role of Science in Watershed Management. Burrell Montz,
Binghamton University. (Ed.)
Issue 137, September 2007. Increasing Freshwater Supplies. Karl Wood, Water Resources
Research Institute, New Mexico State University. (Ed.)
Issue 136, June 2007. Water and Watersheds. Penny Firth, National Science Foundation;
Michelle Kelleher, National Science Foundation; Barbara Levinson, U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency. (Eds.)
Issue 135, December 2006. Integrated Water Resource Management: New Governance,
Tools, and Challenges—Selected international Perspectives. Bruce Hooper, DHI Water and
Environment. (Ed.)
Issue 134, July 2006. River and Lake Restoration: Changing Landscapes. Lynne Y. Lewis,
Bates College. (Ed.)
Issue 133, May 2006. River Adjudications. Andrea Gerlak & John Thorson, Columbia University. (Eds.)
Issue 132, December 2005. Desalination. Tamim Younos, Virginia Polytecnic Institute and
State University. (Ed.)
Issue 131, May 2005. Allocating Water: Economics and the Environment. Gary Johnson, University
of Idaho; Sarah Bigger, Boise State University; Ari Michelsen, Texas A&M University. (Eds.)
Issue 130, March 2005. National Flood Policy a Decade After the 1993 Mississippi Flood.
Stuart A. Davis and Mark C. Dunning, Institute for Water Resources. (Eds.)
Issue 129, October 2004. Water and Homeland Security. Regan Murray, USEPA. (Ed.)
Issue 128, June 2004. Small Water Supply Systems. John Braden, University of Illinois. (Ed.)
Issue 127, February 2004. Water Resources Sustainability. Ethan Timothy Smith, The Sustainable
Water Resources Roundtable. (Ed.)
Issue 126, November 2003. Geographic Perspectives on Water Resources. L. Allan James,
University of South Carolina. (Ed.)
Issue 125, June 2003. Trans-Boundary Water Issues. Kenneth Rubin, Pa Consultants. (Ed.)

For Journal Order Form or complete listing of past issues visit: www.ucowr.org.

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94

International Conference with the Environmental & Water Resources Institute

Building on the success of its first international conference in December of 2006, the Environmental
& Water Resources Institute (EWRI) of the American Society of Civil Engineers continues to expand
its reach with several upcoming events overseas. Already composed of a diverse and international
membership, the Institute seeks to broaden its impact and truly become a global resource to those in the
Environmental and Water Resources industry. Starting in early 2009, EWRI will host three conferences
abroad, extending into 2010.
The first of these events, An International Perspective on Environmental & Water
Resources, serve as a follow up to EWRI’s first international conference in India of
the same name. Held in January 5-7, 2009, this conference in Bangkok, Thailand
featured a wide variety of topics largely focused on water resources and the
environment in developing countries in Asia and Africa. Among those topics were the
issues of Climate Change and Natural Hazards; Water Resources and Water Supply;
and Environment, Ecology, and Waste Management. For more information on this
event, visit the conference website at http://content.asce.org/conferences/thailand09/.
The next of EWRI’s international conferences will be in co-sponsorship with the International Association
of Hydraulic Engineering & Research (IAHR) on August 10-14, 2009. The 33rd IAHR Congress, titled
Water Engineering for a Sustainable Environment, will be co-located in Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada, with the 2009 Canadian Society for Civil Engineering Canadian Hydrotechnical Conference &
Symposium. The technical session topics chosen for the Congress will include:
• Advances in the Fundamentals of Water Science and Engineering
• Water Engineering in Support of Built Environments
• Water Engineering for the Protection and Enhancement of Natural
Watershed and Aquifer Environments
• Water Engineering for Sustainable Coastal and Offshore
Environments (Built and Natural)
• Advances in Hydroinformatics for Integrated Watershed and Coast
Management
To learn more about the 33rd IAHR Congress, please visit http://www.iahr2009.org.
The third of EWRI’s scheduled international conferences will revisit the country of the institute’s first
event abroad with the 3rd International Perspective on Current & Future State of Water Resources & the
Environment in Chennai, India. Scheduled to take place January 4-6, 2010, this event will focus
primarily on the global effect of regional issues and solutions. Just a few of
the many proposed conference topics include Water Resources Planning and
Management; Safety and Security of Water Resources Infrastructure; and
Socioeconomic Issues in Water Resources Development. More information
on this event can be found at http://content.asce.org/conferences/india2010/.
EWRI conferences tend to provide a great level of discourse, interesting
topics, and excellent networking opportunities. The Institute hopes that a great number of people will take
advantage of the opportunity to participate in these international events. For more information on these,
and other, upcoming EWRI conferences please visit http://content.ewrinstitute.org.

UCOWR Journal of Contemporary Water Research & Education

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