People regularly use plants for a wide range of utilitarian, spiritual, pharmacological, and dietary purposes throughout the world. Scholarly understanding of the nature of these uses in prehistory ...is particularly limited by the poor preservation of plant resources in the archaeological record. In the last two decades, researchers in the South Pacific and in Central and South America have developed microscopic starch grain analysis, a technique for overcoming the limitations of poorly preserved plant material.   In Acorns and Bitter Roots , Timothy C. Messner establishes starch grain analysis in the temperate climates of eastern North America using the Delaware River Watershed as a case study for furthering scholarly understanding of the relationship between native people and their biophysical environment in the Woodland Period. Messner’s analysis is based on extensive reviews of the literature on early historic and prehistoric native plant use and the collation of all available archaeobotanical data, a review of which also guided the author in selecting contemporary botanical specimens to identify and in interpreting starch residues recovered from ancient plant-processing technologies. The evidence presented here sheds light on many local ecological and cultural developments as ancient people shifted their subsistence focus from estuarine to riverine settings. These archaeobotanical datasets, Messner argues, illuminate both the conscious and unintentional translocal movement of ideas and ecologies throughout the Eastern Woodlands.
The export of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) from a watershed is a key component of the terrestrial biosphere carbon cycle. There is a need to improve our understanding of how and by how much various ...environmental factors are driving the temporal patterns of DOC export in order to accurately model and evaluate terrestrial carbon storage and fluxes. In this synthesis, we compiled observational data sets from 14 watersheds in the conterminous United States spanning the time period from 1981 to 2017. We used these data sets to examine the relative impacts of various climate, atmospheric deposition, and land cover factors on the temporal patterns of DOC export across watersheds of different sizes and landscape conditions, as well as the time‐series autocorrelation of DOC export. Our results suggest that the dominant factor on an annual scale was the amount of precipitation, which had a positive correlation with DOC export from a watershed. Overall increasing nitrogen deposition was coincident with increasing DOC export, and increasing sulfur deposition was coincident with declining DOC export. The seasonal pattern of DOC export was strongly regulated by air temperature, the long‐term trend was negatively influenced by increasing sulfur deposition, and no obvious autocorrelation was detected in DOC export. In addition, higher rates of DOC export were positively correlated with greater area of wetlands within a watershed, but was not found to be strongly related to any of the other land cover types.
Key Points
We identify key environmental factors explaining temporal patterns of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) export from watersheds
Air temperature regulates the seasonal pattern of DOC export, and sulfur deposition is negatively correlated to the long‐term trend
There is no obvious temporal autocorrelation with DOC export from watersheds
From the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century, haciendas dominated the Latin American countryside. In the Ecuadorian Andes, Runa-Quichua-speaking indigenous people-worked on these large ...agrarian estates as virtual serfs. In Remembering the Hacienda: Religion, Authority, and Social Change in Highland Ecuador, Barry Lyons probes the workings of power on haciendas and explores the hacienda's contemporary legacy. Lyons lived for three years in a Runa village and conducted in-depth interviews with elderly former hacienda laborers. He combines their wrenching accounts with archival evidence to paint an astonishing portrait of daily life on haciendas. Lyons also develops an innovative analysis of hacienda discipline and authority relations. Remembering the Hacienda explains the role of religion as well as the reshaping of Runa culture and identity under the impact of land reform and liberation theology. This beautifully written book is a major contribution to the understanding of social control and domination. It will be valuable reading for a broad audience in anthropology, history, Latin American studies, and religious studies.
Climate change, population growth and the increasing demand for water are all capable of leading to disputes over transboundary water systems. Dealing with these challenges will require the enhancing ...of adaptive capacity, the improving of the quality of water-resources management and a reduction in the risk of conflict between riparian states. Such changes can only be brought about through significant international cooperation. Christina Leb's analysis of the duty to cooperate and the related rights and obligations highlights the interlinkages between this duty and the principles of equitable and reasonable utilisation and the prevention of transboundary harm. In doing so, she considers the law applicable to both international watercourses and transboundary aquifers, and explores the complementarities and interaction between the rules of international water law and the related obligations of climate change and human rights law.
This unique book brings together 27 chapters from some of the world’s leading practitioners and experts on environmental water, communities, law, economics and governance. Its goal is to understand ...the many dimensions of water in the Murray- Darling Basin and provide guidance about how to implement a water management plan that addresses the needs of communities, the economy and the environment. The comprehensiveness of topics covered, the expertise of its authors, and the absolute need to take a multidisciplinary approach to resolving the “wicked problem” of governing our scarce water resource makes this volume a must read for all who care about Australian communities and the environment.
The Phase 5.3 Watershed Model simulates the Chesapeake watershed land use, river flows, and the associated transport and fate of nutrient and sediment loads to the Chesapeake Bay. The Phase 5.3 Model ...is the most recent of a series of increasingly refined versions of a model that have been operational for more than two decades. The Phase 5.3 Model, in conjunction with models of the Chesapeake airshed and estuary, provides estimates of management actions needed to protect water quality, achieve Chesapeake water quality standards, and restore living resources. The Phase 5.3 Watershed Model tracks nutrient and sediment load estimates of the entire 166,000 km2 watershed, including loads from all six watershed states. The creation of software systems, input datasets, and calibration methods were important aspects of the model development process. A community model approach was taken with model development and application, and the model was developed by a broad coalition of model practitioners including environmental engineers, scientists, and environmental managers. Among the users of the Phase 5.3 Model are the Chesapeake watershed states and local governments, consultants, river basin commissions, and universities. Development and application of the model are described, as well as key scenarios ranging from high nutrient and sediment load conditions if no management actions were taken in the watershed, to low load estimates of an all‐forested condition.
Anthropogenic and natural disturbances to freshwater quantity and quality are a greater issue for society than ever before. To successfully restore water resources requires understanding the ...interactions between hydrology, climate, land use, water quality, ecology, and social and economic pressures. This Special Issue of Water includes cutting edge research broadly addressing investigative areas related to experimental study designs and modeling, freshwater pollutants of concern, and human dimensions of water use and management. Results demonstrate the immense, globally transferable value of the experimental watershed approach, the relevance and critical importance of current integrated studies of pollutants of concern, and the imperative to include human sociological and economic processes in water resources investigations. In spite of the latest progress, as demonstrated in this Special Issue, managers remain insufficiently informed to make the best water resource decisions amidst combined influences of land use change, rapid ongoing human population growth, and changing environmental conditions. There is, thus, a persistent need for further advancements in integrated and interdisciplinary research to improve the scientific understanding, management, and future sustainability of water resources.
Today, land degradation and the decrease in the expected services of watersheds have been mainly influenced by human-induced activities. Hence, it requires more attention to adaptively manage and ...provide feasible solutions to watershed disruptions. However, appropriate management of precious commodities such as water, soil, air, and vegetation cover needs insight planning on a proper scale. Nonetheless, such an integrated approach to comprehensive health assessment of watershed resources is yet to be indoctrinated by scholars, implemental agencies, managers, and policymakers. Accordingly, the present endeavor has tried to evaluate the health status of Iran's 30 second-order large watersheds with the pressure-state-response (PSR) approach. In this regard, 44 problem-oriented, influential, and, at the same time, accessible variables with compatible scales at the national level were primarily determined in climatic, hydrologic, anthropogenic, and natural sectors. The collinearity-free and independent variables were then finalized using the variance inflation factor (VIF) test. Ultimately, P, S, and R indices were calculated using the arithmetic mean of 25 normalized variables based on which PSR-based health and security indices were also mapped countrywide. The results indicated that P, S, and R indices varied from 0.49 to 0.69, 0.42 to 0.82, and 0.40 to 0.94, respectively. Health and security indices ranged from 0.46 to 0.69 and 0.30 to 0.89, respectively. The weighted mean of P, S, and R was 0.59, 0.62, and 0.67, respectively, wholly placing them in the intermediate class. The weighted health and security indices were also 0.58 and 0.59, representing the intermediate class. The results showed that study watersheds had different health and security conditions from interplaying watershed-specific factors. The results revealed the necessity of watershed-unique managerial strategies to cope with the existing unfavorable conditions at the country level. However, further insight with high resolution is recommended for the high-priority watersheds to plan implementation and executive projects.
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•Watershed health and security atlases were developed for I.R. Iran.•The Pressure-State-Response (PSR) conceptual model was employed for the assessment.•Health and security variability was studied at 30 second-order watersheds in Iran.•The weighted health and security indices of Iran's watersheds were found moderate.•High-priority watersheds need high-resolution studies for executive projects.
Quantifying the hydrological response to an increased atmospheric CO
2 concentration and climate change is critical for the proper management of water resources within agricultural systems. This ...study modeled the hydrological responses to variations of atmospheric CO
2 (550 and 970
ppm), temperature (+1.1 and +6.4
°C), and precipitation (0%, ±10%, and ±20%) based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projections. The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was used to model the hydrology and impact of climate change in the highly agricultural San Joaquin watershed in California. This watershed has an area of 14,983
km
2 with a Mediterranean climate, resulting in a strong dependence on irrigation. Model calibration (1992–1997) and validation (1998–2005) resulted in Nash–Sutcliffe coefficients of 0.95 and 0.94, respectively, for monthly stream flow. The results of this study suggest that atmospheric CO
2, temperature and precipitation change have significant effects on water yield, evapotranspiration, irrigation water use, and stream flow. Increasing CO
2 concentration to 970
ppm and temperature by 6.4
°C caused watershed-wide average evapotranspiration, averaged over 50 simulated years, to decrease by 37.5%, resulting in increases of water yield by 36.5%, and stream flow by 23.5% compared to the present-day climate. Increasing temperature caused a temporal shift in plant growth patterns and redistributed evapotranspiration and irrigation water demand earlier in the year. This caused an increase in stream flow during the summer months due to decreased irrigation demand. Water yield, however, decreased with an increase in temperature. Increase of precipitation by ±10% and ±20% generally changed water yield and stream flow proportionally, and had negligible effects on predicted evapotranspiration and irrigation water use. Overall, the results indicate that the San Joaquin watershed hydrology is very sensitive to potential future climate changes. Agricultural implications include changes to plant growth rates, irrigation timing and runoff, all of which may affect future water resources and water quality.
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