Water is the most limiting factor for irrigated agriculture in arid and semi-arid areas of European Mediterranean countries. In this book, the authors' explore the different mechanisms and robust tools to monitor plant-water status, with the aim of keeping crops within a certain threshold of moderate-to-mild water stress. Other chapters include research on agricultural techniques in semi-arid environments that would benefit the surrounding environment and impact soil management. The third chapter includes site-specific documentation of landforms developed in the Ejina Basin in Central Asia and its implications for late quaternary landscape evolution and palaeoenvironmental change. The fourth chapter focuses on the links between economic value addition, demographics, personal income and entrepreneurship in selected South African towns. The last chapter reviews thirty years of ecological monitoring in Algerian arid rangelands.

This SpringerBrief reviews currently applied and potential solutions for improving the efficiency and quality of rural electricity supply in India, a major bottleneck for agricultural development. It provides background on the current state of supply and reviews recent and ongoing research and development projects. One selected project, designed and conducted by the authors, is outlined in detail. The research findings, project implementation, and evaluation are intended to provide development practitioners, policy makers, and applied researchers with experience from the field. At the core of this Brief is the integration of technical and social solutions, emphasizing the role of collective action, and the merits and demerits of small-scale, technically simple measures.

The fall of the New Order government in 1998 and the political reform that followed posed substantial challenges for Indonesia's bureaucracy to continue fulfilling its mandate. This book analyses the process of bureaucratic reform in the irrigation sector. Using irrigation Management Transfer policy as the entry point for analysis, it documents and analyses the irrigation bureaucracy's ability to sustain its power and prominence in the sector's development, amidst and against national and international pressures for reform. The book argues that bureaucratic reform in the irrigation sector rather than attempting to change the bureaucracy's functioning in the image of national and global (good) governance perspectives and priorities, should instead focus on linking the irrigation bureaucracy's everyday practice more effectively with farmers' needs and aspirations. Reform efforts of the past decades show that Indonesia's irrigation sector development cannot be redirected without the irrigation bureaucracy's knowledge, experience and cooperation, and without strengthening its downward accountability to farmer-irrigators.

Although over two thirds of the Earth's surface is covered by water, more than 97% is ocean water which is too salty for human use or even for irrigation. Consequently, the freshwater is only 3% and almost 1% of the available freshwater is liquid surface water that can be used directly by humans. The rest is groundwater and iced water. Yet still, freshwater is considered to be one of the most abundant resources on earth. In the agriculture sector only, over two-thirds of the available freshwater is used for irrigation. This book focuses on the technology, management and efficiency of drip irrigation.

Today's irrigation management faces challenges and competition with other sectors (ie: household, industry, and environmental), quality degradation, and uncertain climatic conditions. To cope with these situations, the irrigation managers need precise estimation/determination of irrigation needs for crops, advance/water-saving techniques for water application, water conservation approaches, economic considerations in irrigation, and potentials for using marginal quality water in irrigation (such as saline water, and waste-water). This book focuses on all of the above issues: starting with irrigation management strategies for field crops -- to suitability of saline and waste-water as irrigation water. The book is useful to identify the need and adopt emerging technologies for irrigation management, as well as to identify appropriate methodologies for social, economic, and environmental benefits of improved irrigation management.

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Using a variety of case studies, this book provides an overview of how societies have gradually developed their water resources and furthers our understanding of how such resources can be managed successfully or unsuccessfully. Discussing how and why particular options are selected, and why a particular course of events eventually prevails, the book stresses the importance of context and a multidisciplinary approach in moving towards sustainable and equitable development.

2009 reprint of the 1956 second edition. This title made available for the first time an adequately organized, comprehensive analytical method for evaluating the stresses, reactions and deflections in an irregular piping system in space, unlimited as to the character, location or number of concentrated loadings or restraints. Profusely illustrated and meticulously detailed.

One teacher's long journey to a kind of enlightenment.
"This is the best piece I've read on teaching in years. Not only does Guy nail issue after issue with laser-like precision, but he manages to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted with humor and brief anecdotes, avoiding both the puffed-up academic pose and the grim earnestness of the wounded and the self-righteous. I really love it." Bill Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and author of "To Teach, The Journey of a Teacher," "Teaching Toward Freedom," and "Fugitive Days."

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

This scarce antiquarian book is included in our special Legacy Reprint Series. In the interest of creating a more extensive selection of rare historical book reprints, we have chosen to reproduce this title even though it may possibly have occasional imperfections such as missing and blurred pages, missing text, poor pictures, markings, dark backgrounds and other reproduction issues beyond our control. Because this work is culturally important, we have made it available as a part of our commitment to protecting, preserving and promoting the world's literature.

The author of this book has traveled extensively in many desert and semi-desert territories of the U.S.S.R., Morocco, Tunisia, the Egyptian region of the U.A.R., Pakistan and India where he realized the importance of water for the reclamation of vast areas of arid and semi-arid lands. During his visits the author became acquainted with the theory and practice of land irrigation in many countries of North Africa and Asia. The present book is the first attempt at generalizing the vast amount of material dealing with the hydrogeology of the irrigated lands of the arid zone of North Africa and Asia, stretching from the African coastline of the Atlantic Ocean to the central parts of Asia. Outlined in this book are the origin and distribution of saline lands in the deserts of North Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the Iran Highlands, Middle Asia, China and Mongolia. A description is given of the surface waters in irrigated areas of the arid zone together with the sources, movement and draining, infiltration, condensation and evaporation of water in the desert and semi-desert territories. The book gives a sketch of the regime of free ground waters in irrigated areas and methods of studying it, problems of water balance and its forecasting, based on experimental research and simple theoretical calculations. Principles of the hydrogeological division of irrigated lands into districts and basic measures to prevent their salinization are also given. The book can serve as a textbook for engineer-hydrogeologists, melioration specialists and students at specialized hydrogeological and agricultural institutes and schools.