Groundwater metering: revisiting a ubiquitous ‘best practice’

Hydrogeology Journal - It is often taken for granted that metering is an unarguable ‘best practice’ when it comes to the quantitative management of groundwater resources. This paper...     

Below the radar: the boom of groundwater use in the central part of the Nile Delta in Egypt

The Nile Delta of Egypt is known for its large irrigated area supplied with water diverted from the Nile River, with a limited use of groundwater, largely for domestic and industrial use. Official statistics for the whole delta indicate that there are a few thousand individual wells used for agriculture by a population of over 2 million farmers. This study, however, shows that a phenomenon of groundwater development for irrigation has been unfolding over the last few years, largely below the radar of managers and researchers. A survey was carried out in the central part of the delta with the objective of (1) uncovering the actual situation of groundwater use in this part of the delta and (2) speculating on its implications. The results of the survey pointed to a recent and booming tube-well drilling industry, with well densities in some parts reaching one well every 2 ha. The development of groundwater abstraction in the central delta is strongly linked to inadequate and/or untimely availability of surface water in the canals. A technical, economic, and management characterization of wells complements the study, showing a continuum between purely private/individual ownership of wells and collective investments and management. Lastly, the article explores the implications of unchecked abstraction at the farm, local and delta scales.     

Periodicities in the high-mass X-ray binary system RX J0146.9+6121/LS I+61°235

The high-mass X-ray binary RX J0146.9+6121, with optical counterpart LS I+61°235 (V831 Cas), is an intriguing system on the outskirts of the open cluster NGC 663. It contains the slowest Be type X-ray pulsar known with a pulse period of around 1400 s and, primarily from the study of variation in the emission line profile of Hα, it is known to have a Be decretion disc with a one-armed density wave period of approximately 1240 d. Here we present the results of an extensive photometric campaign, supplemented with optical spectroscopy, aimed at measuring short time-scale periodicities. We find three significant periodicities in the photometric data at, in order of statistical significance, 0.34, 0.67 and 0.10 d. We give arguments to support the interpretation that the 0.34 and 0.10 d periods could be due to stellar oscillations of the B-type primary star and that the 0.67 d period is the spin period of the Be star with a spin axis inclination of  23⁺¹⁰₋₈  degrees. We measured a systemic velocity of  −37.0 ± 4.3 km s⁻¹  confirming that LS I+61°235 has a high probability of membership in the young cluster NGC 663 from which the system's age can be estimated as 20–25 Myr. From archival RXTE All Sky Monitor (ASM) data we further find 'super' X-ray outbursts roughly every 450 d. If these super outbursts are caused by the alignment of the compact star with the one-armed decretion disc enhancement, then the orbital period is approximately 330 d.     

Performance evaluation of MSK and OFDM modulations for future GNSS signals

The objective of this work is to investigate the performances of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and minimum frequency shift keying (MSK) modulations as potential future global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) signal modulation schemes. MSK is used in global system for mobile communications because of its spectral efficiency, while OFDM is used in WLAN and digital video broadcast-terrestrial because of its multipath mitigation capability. These advantages of MSK and OFDM modulations render them as promising modulation candidates for future GNSS signals to offer enhanced performances in challenging environments. Gabor bandwidth and multipath error envelopes of these two modulations were computed and compared with those of the current global positioning system (GPS), Galileo, and Beidou signal modulations. The results show that OFDM modulation demonstrated promises as a viable future GNSS modulation, especially for signals that require pre-filtering bandwidths larger than 2 MHz, while MSK modulation is more desirable for pre-filtering bandwidth below 2 MHz where it exhibits the largest Gabor bandwidth.     

Norias,boreholes and the role of the state during the groundwater ‘silent revolution’ in La Mancha,Spain

The ‘silent revolution’ is a phenomenon describing the individualistic behaviour of farmers in the adoption of intensive groundwater abstraction technologies, which in some cases has led to groundwater over-abstraction and environmental degradation in semiarid areas such as La Mancha, Spain. However, a lacuna exists as to the extent to which state politics have affected the development of groundwater abstraction technologies in Spain. With new quantitative and qualitative data from the irrigation community of Manzanares and public irrigation and colonisation plans, this report studies the adoption of groundwater abstraction technology and investigates the historical role of the state in the development of modern groundwater-fed irrigation socio-ecologies in the semiarid area of La Mancha in Spain.