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Abstract The article describes the nature of the ongoing channel processes occurring in large damless water intakes from the Amudarya-Karakum, Karshi, and Amu – Bukhara channels located in its middle course. The characteristic features of the ongoing channel processes in the area of water intake are given. Based on the analysis of the current state of damless water intake, a method for improving its operation is recommended. To solve the problems of ensuring high-quality water intake and water supply, experimental studies were carried out to determine the angle of the bottom threshold in the inlet section of the head structure in the ABMCh. The analysis of the studies showed that for the threshold angles to the shore β = 30°, 45° 60°, an increase in the angle β from 30° to 60° increases the intensity of the artificial transverse circulation formed in the flow. It is proved that this circumstance is also true for a constant angle of threshold β with an increase in the relative threshold height H rth . The bottom threshold ensures the entry of bottom sediments into the head structure of the damless water intake. The threshold height is set to 1.44 m, which is determined in comparison with the height of the beds of sediments. To prevent the entry of a large amount of bottom sediment into the head structure of a damless intake, it is recommended that the device be used especially in the inlet section of the channel. It is shown that a Karakum channel is intensively exposed to deigish. Moreover, in this process a certain sequence is traced. First, one deigish is formed, the erosion products of which create favorable conditions for the occurrence of the next deigish. So the chain of deigish “walks” along the shore. The distance between deigish, also a “step,” varies widely: from 3-7 to 15-40 m or more. Then, the remaining protrusions between the deigish are washed out, which leads to a general expansion of the channel. It has been established that deigish appears and develops in both straight and curved sections of the channel. In the latter case, they are formed mainly on the concave bank, although there are cases of their location on the convex. This means that there are corresponding conditions for its formation in both straight and curved sections of the channel. It is substantiated that the formation and intensive development of deigish are associated with the intense channel-forming activity of the flow, which manifests itself both in the process of developing channel forms and in active sediment transport. It is recommended that in order to prevent the deigish process, it is necessary to carry out water management measures aimed at strengthening the channel of the channel. The implementation of concrete cladding using modern materials to reduce losses on filtering the channel in addition to preventing deigish channel and also helps to increase the efficiency of the irrigation channel.

Although the label innovation is applied to almost everything, with even the diffusion of innovations to society being called innovation, innovation research remains focused on bringing technology to the economic market. this dissonance provoked the central questions discussed at the 2nd International Conference on Indicators and Concepts of Innovation (ICICI). What are non-technological and non-economic innovations? What impact do these innovations have on the economy? Are there actually purely techno- logical or economic innovations? Consisting of selected answers to these questions, this volume presents international approaches beyond the technology to market main- stream of innovation research as well as analyses of socially robust innovations that succeed in both economic and non-economic markets and are hence more sustainable and more profitable. the 2nd ICICI has been supported by the SCoPES program of the Swiss National Science Foundation.

These documents present the data related to a high temperature heat injection test, which was carried out at an injection temperature of 74 °C in a shallow aquifer. The data set contains transient measurements of temperatures at 18 wells in 10 depths and measurements of the experimental boundary conditions (injection temperature and flow rate) at a temporal resolution of up to 1 min. In addition, the data contains coordinates of the wells used for the temperature measurements and data of a multilevel multi well pumping test. The raw and processed data is provided as well as the tools for data processing. The presented data is useful to gain insights about the thermohydraulic processes induced by a high temperature heat injection test and can furthermore be used for the development and verification of numerical models of the heat injection test and similar applications like high temperature aquifer thermal energy storage.

This is a two-hundred-year long dataset of the annual average, minimum, and maximum discharges at five stations draining the Mississippi River watershed: at Clinton, IA, Herman, MO, St. Louis, MO, Louisville, KY, and Vicksburg, MS. The data are useful to test for increases in the three discharge metrics, and correlations with air pressure differentials represented in the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) Index. These data may be useful for climate change assessments through modeling or synthetic assessments using other data sets. Search of archival records published by the Mississippi River Commission (Corps. of Engineers) and the U.S. Geological Survey

We estimated numbers of individuals for each species, using a backpack electroshocker with standard electrofishing procedures. We used block nets to provide closure at the ends of the segment during years when the stream reach was flowing. We used a two-pass removal depletion method to estimate abundances within segments. After placing captured fish in aerated coolers filled with stream water, we identified fish to species and categorized them by life stage (juvenile or adult) based on standard length, and then returned the fish to the same section of stream. In 2011 (the first year), size data for R. balteatus were only available for the first 30 fish caught (sampling in 2011 was focused mainly on R. osculus, and L. copei, for a mark-recapture study that is reported elsewhere). However, we recorded number captured of R. balteatus for each segment and pass of the stream reach. We calculated the ratio of adult to juvenile life stages of the first 30 fish, and used that ratio to estimate the R. balteatus life stage distribution (adult or juvenile) for additional segments for 2011 only. To estimate abundances, we used a maximum-likelihood population estimator (Microfish, Van Deventer 1998). The data has been given both as the estimate generated by the maximum-likelihood population estimate, as well as a log transformed version of the original estimate.  Climate change projections in the western United States suggest that snowpack levels and winter precipitation will decline, but mean annual precipitation levels will remain unchanged. Mountain streams that once saw a constant source of water from snowpack will begin to see large seasonal variation in flow. Increased stream intermittency will create significant conservation risks for fish species; however, few studies have examined the abundance responses of fish in high elevation streams to the shift from perennial to intermittent flow. To determine the effects of stream intermittency on fish abundance in a montane stream, we quantified changes in abundance for five species over a five-year period that exhibited extreme variation in streamflow. Responses varied by species and life stage, suggesting that the shift from perennial to intermittent flow will cause significant declines in abundance for some species. Northern leatherside chub, may experience large decreases in their range as the availability of perennial streams decreases. The study of drought effects on fish abundance will be crucial to the conservation of biodiversity in montane regions of the world. Data is provided in a .xlsx file. It can be opened on Excel, Google Sheets, or Apple Numbers.

As climate change continues to increase air temperature in high-altitude ecosystems, it has become critical to understand the controls and scales of aquatic habitat vulnerability to warming. Here we used a nested array of high-frequency sensors, and advances in time-series models, to examine spatiotemporal variation in thermal vulnerability in a model Sierra Nevada watershed. Stream thermal sensitivity to atmospheric warming fluctuated strongly over the year and peaked in spring and summer—when hot days threaten invertebrate communities most. The reach scale (~50 m) best captured variation in summer thermal regimes. Elevation, discharge, and conductivity were important correlates of summer water temperature across reaches, but upstream water temperature was the paramount driver—supporting that cascading warming occurs downstream in the network. Finally, we used our estimated summer thermal sensitivity and downscaled projections of summer air temperature to forecast end-of-the-century stream warming, when extreme drought years like 2020-2021 become the norm. We found that 25.5% of cold-water habitat may be lost under business-as-usual RCP 8.5 (or 7.9% under mitigated RCP 4.5). This estimated reduction suggests that 27.2% of stream macroinvertebrate biodiversity (11.9% under the mitigated scenario) will be stressed or threatened in what was previously cold‑water habitat. Our quantitative approach is transferrable to other watersheds with spatially‑replicated time series and illustrates the importance of considering variation in the vulnerability of mountain streams to warming over both space and time. This approach may inform watershed conservation efforts by helping identify, and potentially mitigate, sites and time windows of peak vulnerability. Please see the README.md document. Please see the README.md document.

Natural potentials for future cropland expansion The potential for the expansion of cropland is restricted by the availability of land resources and given local natural conditions. As a result, area that is highly suitable for agriculture according to the prevailing local biophysical conditions but is not under cultivation today has a high natural potential for expansion. Policy regulations can further restrict the availability of land for expansion by designating protected areas, although they may be suitable for agriculture. Conversely, by applying e.g. irrigation practices, land can be brought under cultivation, although it may naturally not be suitable. Here, we investigate the potentials for agricultural expansion for near future climate scenario conditions to identify the suitability of non-cropland areas for expansion according to their local natural conditions. We determine the available energy, water and nutrient supply for agricultural suitability from climate, soil and topography data, by using a fuzzy logic approach according to Zabel et al. (2014). It considers the 16 globally most important staple and energy crops. These are: barley, cassava, groundnut, maize, millet, oil palm, potato, rapeseed, rice, rye, sorghum, soy, sugarcane, sunflower, summer wheat, winter wheat. The parameterization of the membership functions that describe each of the crops’ specific natural requirements is taken from Sys et al. (1993). The considered natural conditions are: climate (temperature, precipitation, solar radiation), soil properties (texture, proportion of coarse fragments and gypsum, base saturation, pH content, organic carbon content, salinity, sodicity), and topography (elevation, slope). As a result of the fuzzy logic approach, values in a range between 0 and 1 describe the suitability of a crop for each of the prevailing natural conditions at a certain location. The smallest suitability value over all parameters finally determines the suitability of a crop. The daily climate data is provided by simulation results from the global climate model ECHAM5 (Jungclaus et al. 2006) for near future (2011-2040) SRES A1B climate scenario conditions. Soil data is taken from the Harmonized World Soil Database (HWSD) (FAO et al. 2012), and topography data is applied from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) (Farr et al. 2007). In order to gather a general crop suitability, which does not refer to one specific crop, the most suitable crop with the highest suitability value is chosen at each pixel. In addition the natural biophysical conditions, we consider today’s irrigated areas according to (Siebert et al. 2013). We assume that irrigated areas globally remain constant until 2040, since adequate data on the development of irrigated areas do not exist, although it is likely that freshwater availability for irrigation could be limited in some regions, while in other regions surplus water supply could be used to expand irrigation practices (Elliott et al. 2014). However, it is difficult to project where irrigation practices will evolve, since it is driven by economic investment costs that are required to establish irrigation infrastructure. In principle, all agriculturally suitable land that is not used as cropland today has the natural potential to be converted into cropland. We assume that only urban and built-up areas are not available for conversion, although more than 80% of global urban areas are agriculturally suitable (Avellan et al. 2012). However, it seems unlikely that urban areas will be cleared at the large scale due to high investment costs, growing cities and growing demand for settlements. Concepts of urban and vertical farming usually are discussed under the aspects of cultivating fresh vegetables and salads for urban population. They are not designed to extensively grow staple crops such as wheat or maize for feeding the world in the near future. Urban farming would require one third of the total global urban area to meet only the global vegetable consumption of urban dwellers (Martellozzo et al. 2015). Thus, urban agriculture cannot substantially contribute to global agricultural production of staple crops. Protected areas or dense forested areas are not excluded from the calculation, in order not to lose any information in the further combination with the biodiversity patterns (see chapter 2.3). We use data on current cropland distribution by Ramankutty et al. (2008) and urban and built-up area according to the ESA-CCI land use/cover dataset (ESA 2014). From this data, we calculate the ‘natural expansion potential index’ (Iexp) that expresses the natural potential for an area to be converted into cropland as follows: Iexp = S * Aav The index is determined by the quality of agricultural suitability (S) (values between 0 and 1) multiplied with the amount of available area (Aav) for conversion (in percentage of pixel area). The available area includes all suitable area that is not cultivated today, and not classified as urban or artificial area. The index ranges between 0 and 100 and indicates where the conditions for cropland expansion are more or less favorable, when taking only natural conditions into account, disregarding socio-economic factors, policies and regulations that drive or inhibit cropland expansion. The index is a helpful indicator for identifying areas where cropland expansion could take place in the near future. Further information Detailled information are available in the following publication: Delzeit, R., F. Zabel, C. Meyer and T. Václavík (2017). Addressing future trade-offs between biodiversity and cropland expansion to improve food security. Regional Environmental Change 17(5): 1429-1441. DOI: 10.1007/s10113-016-0927-1 Contact Please contact: Dr. Florian Zabel, f.zabel@lmu.de, Department für Geographie, LMU München (www.geografie.uni-muenchen.de) This research was carried out within the framework of the GLUES (Global Assessment of Land Use Dynamics, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Ecosystem Services) Project, which has been supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) program on sustainable land management (grant number: 01LL0901E).

The need to define and implement adaptation solutions has emerged since the early 1990s when the IPCC started assessing the changes, causes, potential impacts and responses to climate change. Yet, limited information exists on the context-specific effectiveness of local adaptation of agronomic practices. The Near East and North Africa (NENA) region is one of the world’s regions with the lowest per capita natural resources availability and one of the most vulnerable to climate change. For these reasons, there is an urgent need to improve the development and implementation of adaptation plans and actions to cope with climate change. This research implements the systematic review (SR) methodology to assess the scientific literature in adopting climate change adaptation practices for agriculture at the farm level in the NENA region. Results highlight a significant knowledge gap in adaptation in the region and recommend intensifying targeted research and funding to cope with urgent regional climate risks to rural and agricultural livelihoods. Key policy insights:A limited number of studies assess the costs and benefits of climate change adaptation options for the agricultural sector in the NENA region, with a majority of these published in the last ten years.Adapting crop management techniques to climate risks generates a net improvement in Near East and North Africa yields. However, adaptation responses aiming to increase agrosystems resilience show context-specific effectiveness.Water management options, which benefit crop water use efficiency to different extents, present relatively high implementation costs.Integrated management options show the potential to achieve additional multidimensional benefits. Still, well-designed long-term experiments are required to evaluate these practices in the different farming systems under present and projected climate conditions.An urgent need is to promote adaptation research for the various farming systems in the NENA region and to estimate the cost of adaptation measures to guarantee farmer incomes and food security in the face of climate change. A limited number of studies assess the costs and benefits of climate change adaptation options for the agricultural sector in the NENA region, with a majority of these published in the last ten years. Adapting crop management techniques to climate risks generates a net improvement in Near East and North Africa yields. However, adaptation responses aiming to increase agrosystems resilience show context-specific effectiveness. Water management options, which benefit crop water use efficiency to different extents, present relatively high implementation costs. Integrated management options show the potential to achieve additional multidimensional benefits. Still, well-designed long-term experiments are required to evaluate these practices in the different farming systems under present and projected climate conditions. An urgent need is to promote adaptation research for the various farming systems in the NENA region and to estimate the cost of adaptation measures to guarantee farmer incomes and food security in the face of climate change.