Water and Sustainability in Arid Regions Bridging the Gap Between Physical and Social Sciences

About this book

International voices fill the pages of Water and Sustainability in Arid Regions, forming an original scientific exploration of current water research and management issues. In arid regions, agriculture that is ill-adapted to the environment, accelerated urbanization, poverty, and increasing pollution challenge access to and uses of water. Understanding these issues requires incorporating findings from both the physical and social sciences at different temporal and spatial scales. The chapters in Water and Sustainability in Arid Regions were written by hydrologists, remote sensing specialists, ecologists, historians, economists, political scientists, architects, archaeologists, and other experts who live in and study arid lands.

The authors present updates, overviews, and analyses of water challenges these areas have faced and are striving to address, from salinization in the fabled Taklimakan Desert in China to land degradation in the northern Mediterranean to groundwater over-exploitation in the southwestern United States. Water and Sustainability in Arid Regions also examines desertification, remote sensing, qanat systems, architecture, arsenic contamination, and other case studies from Iran, the Maghreb region, Argentina and Chile, and Mexico. From this conceptual mosaic of comparative perspectives and research methods emerges a strong assumption: an interdisciplinary approach that combines physical and social sciences is the first step toward globally and comprehensively addressing water and sustainability.

Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Contributors

Section I: CONTEMPORARY ISSUES
1. Eco-Reconstruction in Northwest China
2. Remote Sensing Assessment of Salinization Impacts in the Tarim Basin: the Delta Oasis of the Ugan and Kuqa Rivers
3. Estimating Net Primary Production in Xinjiang Through Remote Sensing
4. The Recent Evolution of the Oasis Environment in the Taklimakan Desert, China
5. High Demand in a Land of Water Scarcity: Iran
6. Common Scarcity, Diverse Responses in the Maghreb Region
7. Global Food Production and Climate Change in Tunisia

Section II: LEARNING FROM HISTORY
1. The Qanat: A Living History in Iran
2. Notes from the Turpan Basin: Pioneering Research on the Karez
3. An Introduction to the Khettara in Morocco: Two Contrasting Cases
Appendix: Rehabilitating a Dead Khettara
4. Digitally Conserving an Endangered Built Heritage in Kashgar, an Oasis City of the Taklimakan
5. The Taklimakan Oases: Environmental Evolution Shown Through Geoarcheaology

Section III: MANAGEMENT FOR SUSTAINABILITY
1. How the Predominance of Resources Informs Management
2. Conjunctive Water Management in the U.S. Southwest
3. Managing Water Amid Rapid Urbanization: Mexico's North Borderlands
4. Forecasting Streamflows in the San Juan River Basin in Argentina
5. Arsenic and Water Quality Challenges in South America
6. Evaluating the Restoration of Dryland Ecosystems in the Northern Mediterranean
7. Old and New: Changing Paradigms in Arid Lands Water Management

Glossary of Units of Measurement and Chemical Formulas
Subject Index

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