DEVELOPING COMPETITION FOR WATER IN THE URBANIZING AREAS OF COLORADO1

ABSTRACT: Rapid population growth in the metropolitan area of Denver, Colorado, is causing conflicts over water use. Two cities, Thomton and Westminster, have begun condemnation proceedings against three irrigation companies to secure agricultural water rights for municipal use. This is the first condemnation proceeding against irrigation water rights for municipal use. Should the suit succeed, over 30,000 acres of presently irrigated land will lose its water supply. There are about four hundred landowners in the area; two hundred of these are commercial farmers, including truck, dairy and specialty farms. Total agricultural production amounts to about $8 million per year. About 561 jobs related to agriculture will disappear along with about $4 million in not income. Only 6.4 percent of the farmland along the Front Range is irrigated. Continued urban growth will put pressure on the water supply of much of this land. The interested parties of the region should cooperate to lessen the impact of urban growth on agricultural lands and water by forming a metropolitan water district. Such a district could share costs of development of additional municipal water and develop systems where municipalities would recycle waste water back to the irrigated lands.     

Local air pollution and global climate change taxes: a distributional analysis for the case of Spain

Global climate change measures are difficult to implement. In this context, local air pollution measures may play an important role in the political agenda since their effects are felt more immediately by citizens. Distributional implications are one of the main barriers for implementing environmental policies. This paper explores the distributional implications of air pollution taxes and compares them to climate change taxes. For the comparison, both tax schemes were set to yield the same revenue. Methodologically, the study uses a top–down approach linking a macro model to a micro model. We find that taxes on local air pollutants are more regressive than those levied on CO₂. This is because the goods implicitly taxed have a greater weight in the consumer basket of low-income groups, even if the tax revenues are recycled. Furthermore, the revenue-neutral recycle scheme increases both taxes efficiency, but, at the same time, can increase regressivity.     

A GIS/Simulation Framework for Assessing Change in Water Yield over Large Spatial Scales

Recent legislation to initiate vegetation management in the Central Sierra hydrologic region of California includes a focus on corresponding changes in water yield. This served as the impetus for developing a combined geographic information system (GIS) and simulation assessment framework. Using the existing vegetation density condition, together with proposed rules for thinning to reduce fire risk, a set of simulation model inputs were generated for examining the impact of the thinning scenario on water yield. The approach allows results to be expressed as the mean and standard deviation of change in water yield for each 1-km² map cell that is thinned. Values for groups of cells are aggregated for typical watershed units using area-weighted averaging. Wet, dry, and average precipitation years were simulated over a large region. Where snow plays an important role in hydrologic processes, the simulated change in water yield was less than 0.5% of expected annual runoff for a typical watershed. Such small changes would be undetectable in the field using conventional stream flow analysis. These results suggest that use of water yield increases to help justify forest-thinning activities or offset their cost will be difficult.     

海口湾人工填海前后冲淤演变数值模拟

为了解近年南海明珠项目、葫芦岛、秀英港扩建工程等人工填海工程对海口湾冲淤变化的影响,基于FVCOM海洋数值模型,对研究区人工填海前后潮流场、波浪场及冲淤变化进行了数值模拟。人工填海后,综合各条件下的冲淤情况,海口湾受潮流和波浪共同作用大部分区域处于淤积状态,年淤积量预测值为0.1～1.0 m;白沙角等局部区域处于侵蚀状态,年冲刷量预测值为0.1～0.3 m;受海口湾人工填海工程的影响,秀英港航道的水动力条件减弱,对通航条件改善有利,需加强航道的水深监测和定时的清淤工作;在南海明珠人工岛南侧波影区泥沙堆积会形成向海的舌状的突出体,其两侧海岸形成侵蚀后退带,需人工补沙等措施以保证岸线稳定。     

Effective communication about complex environmental issues: Perceived quality of information about carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) depends on stakeholder collaboration

This experimental research addresses the effectiveness of communication about complex environmental issues, depending on whether the same information is provided by multiple collaborating or by individual organizations (i.e., stakeholders). The information provided pertains to carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology, as an example of a complex environmental issue. In Studies 1 (N = 75) and 2 (N = 66) we found that participants perceived factual information from collaborating stakeholders to be of higher quality than when the same information was provided by individual stakeholders. As predicted, the expectation of diverse perspectives being represented in the collaborative information mediated this effect. In addition, in Study 3 (N = 79) the perceived dissimilarity of collaborating stakeholders was shown to be an important precondition for the collaboration effect observed in Studies 1 and 2. Finally, these studies indicate that occasional collaboration between different stakeholders does not necessarily harm the perceived credibility of each individual stakeholder.     

吐曼河近5a水质变化浅析

通过单因子评价法对吐曼河水质现状及近期变化趋势进行了分析,揭示了近几年来吐曼河水质年内及年际变化的特点,以期对吐曼河水污染治理提供参考。