Academic literature on the topic 'Mazowe Pilot Catchment Project'

Diffuse phosphorus loss from agricultural fields is an important contributor to the eutrophication of waterbodies. The objective of this study was to evaluate a pilot project for the implementation of mitigation measures to reduce P losses. The pilot project is situated in southwestern Norway and, covers a 14-year period (2004–2018). It included data on the implementation of mitigation measures and water quality monitoring for six small catchments. The mitigation measures consisted of no tillage in autumn, reduced P fertilizer application, grassed buffer zones, and sedimentation ponds. Extra efforts were made to reduce diffuse P losses during the period from 2008 to 2010. The project comprised economic incentives, an information campaign, and farm visits. Data from 2004 and 2010 showed that the use of P fertilizer during this period decreased by 80% and the area of no-till in autumn increased in all six catchments and covered 100% of the area in three of the six catchments in 2010. However, with decreased economic incentives after 2010, the degree to which the mitigation measures were implemented was reversed; P-fertilization increased, and no-till in autumn decreased. No significant effects of mitigation measures on total P and suspended sediment concentrations were detected. We conclude that economic incentives are necessary for the comprehensive implementation of mitigation measures and but that it is not always possible to show the effect on water quality.

As part of the Water Co-Governance for Sustainable Ecosystems (WaterCoG) project, this research evaluated two river catchment pilots in the United Kingdom (UK) via a series of semi-structured interviews in order to better understand how collaborative governance (co-governance) approaches contribute to water governance. The findings demonstrate that the participatory process used by catchment partnerships (comprising stakeholders working together within a catchment area) to co-produce knowledge has enabled them to jointly identify improvements that are more meaningful than previous actions to those involved or affected by the situation in their catchment. However, there are concerns about the balance of social, economic and environmental interests in decision making, as well as perceived misunderstandings about the situation in the catchment as a whole. All interviewees (comprising stakeholders from across different scales and levels of water governance) recognized benefits from working together. They also observed that progress to deliver measures is impeded by polices and institutions that are not conducive to partnership working. The interviewees recognized and valued the significant capacity and capability of catchment partnership host organization(s) to facilitate and enable the development of the catchment partnership. However, they also raised important questions about the host’s ability to represent the needs and interests of all catchment partnership members. The recommendations emerging from this research suggest ways to improve water co-governance, including considering the feasibility and desirability of the catchment partnership host; reconceptualizing catchment management plans as a process rather than an outcome; conducting and regularly reviewing a stakeholder analysis of catchment partnership members; working more closely together with other types of partnerships and committees; engaging in and providing opportunities for developing skills in systems thinking, social learning and collaborative actions; working with the UK Government to develop place-based policies and plans; and engaging in dialogue with the UK Government and other bodies to review access to funding and other types of resources.

This paper describes a 2-year pilot project undertaken in an urban catchment in Cape Town, South Africa. The impermeable area of the Lotus River catchment has doubled over 15 years, from 17% in 1983 to 34% in 1997. Following the abolition of urban influx control in 1990, informal settlements in the catchment grew rapidly and now house about 90,000 out of the catchment's total population of 380,000 people. The informal areas are still largely unserviced, despite a commitment from local government to speed up service delivery to the poorest areas of the city. Within the Lotus River project, hydrological and ecological assessments of the urban watercourses were undertaken, through physico-chemical and microbiological sampling programmes, macro-invertebrate counts, and vegetation sampling. All available information regarding the catchment was integrated within a GIS platform, including demographic and socio-economic data on the various communities, and hydrogeological information on the underlying aquifer obtained from earlier studies. The integrated nature of the project allows a number of conclusions and recommendations to be drawn, regarding the management of this particular catchment. However, important general lessons have also been learned which can be applied by local authorities responsible for urban catchments in developing countries. The necessity of providing the required institutional structures cannot be overemphasised.

A stormwater treatment plant using dissolved air flotation was operated in 1993, at the outlet of the Chelles River catchment area (Seine-et-Marne, France). The process was divided into two different stages. Firstly, a coagulation/flocculation stage, secondly a flotation stage in a flotation tank. The flow rate was set at 13 m3/h. Stormwater was the main part of the effluent but with some urban wastewater as the network is not strictly separate. The process efficiency was tested for suspended solids, chemical oxygen demand and hydrocarbons. A total hydrocarbon removal was observed. Finally, constant output concentrations were observed in spite of important input roughwater concentration variations.

Abstract. The application of the hydrological process-oriented model J2000 (J2K) is part of a cooperation project between the Thuringian Environmental Agency (Thüringer Landesanstalt für Umwelt und Geologie – TLUG) and the Department of Geoinformatics of the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena focussing on the implementation of the EU water framework directive (WFD). In the first project phase J2K was parametrised and calibrated for a mesoscale catchment to quantify if it can be used as hydrological part of a multi-objective tool-box needed for the implementation of the WFD. The main objectives for that pilot study were: The development and application of a suitable distribution concept which provide the spatial data basis for various tasks and which reflects the specific physiogeographical variability and heterogeneity of river basins adequately. This distribution concept should consider the following constraints: The absolute number of spatial entities, which forms the basis for any distributive modelling should be as small as possible, but the spatial distributed factors, which controls quantitative and qualitative hydrological processes should not be generalised to much. The distribution concept of hydrological response units HRUs (Flügel, 1995) was selected and enhanced by a topological routing scheme (Staudenrausch, 2001) for the simulation of lateral flow processes. J2K should be calibrated for one subbasin of the pilot watershed only. Then the parameter set should be used on the other subbasins (referred as transfer basins) to investigate and quantify the transferability of a calibrated model and potential spatial dependencies of its parameter set. In addition, potential structural problems in the process description should be identified by the transfer to basins which show a different process dominance as the one which was used for calibration does. Model calibration and selection of efficiency criteria for the quantification of the model quality should be based on a comprehensive sensitivity and uncertainty analysis (Bäse, 2005) and multi-response validations with independent data sets (Krause and Flügel, 2005) carried out in advance in the headwater part of the calibration basin. To obtain good results in the transfer basins the calibrated parameter set could be adjusted slightly. This step was considered as necessary because of specific constraints which were not of significant importance in the calibration basin. This readjustment should be carried out on parameters which show a sensitive reaction on the identified differences in the environmental setup. Potential scaling problems of the process description, distribution concept or model structure should be identified by the comparison of the modelling results obtained in a small headwater region of the calibration basin with observed streamflow to find out if the selected efficiency measures show a significant change.

In view of a European Innovation Project (DG XIII) on the application of the Urban Pollution Management (UPM) procedure, a European consortium was set up to carry out pilot studies in Belgium, France, Ireland, Italy and Portugal. On the Belgian pilot catchment of Tielt the impact from sewer system and sewage treatment plant (STP) on the receiving water courses was studied for both the existing situation and for a number of possible improvement schemes, using the Intermittent Standards, described in the UPM procedure. The integrated modelling revealed some interesting conclusions on the relative impact of the schemes considered.

This paper summarises the lessons learned during the planning and construction of four rainwater harvesting (RWH) pilot plants in the village of Epyeshona (400 inhabitants) in central northern Namibia. The main problem of the region is that the water demand of its population exceeds the local natural resources. The rainfall in the project region is extremely variable (50–990 mm per year), evaporation rates are high, perennial rivers do not exist, and groundwater aquifers are saline due to low soil permeability and high evaporation. The project's activities were prepared and accompanied by stakeholder participation and capacity development. The village community chose the techniques and pilot sites in several participatory workshops. Three roof catchment systems with differing tank designs (polyethylene, ferrocement, and concrete bricks) for individual households and a concrete-lined ground catchment facility for six households were built. The collected water is supposed to be used for horticulture. Hence, gardening plots and drip irrigation systems were created. Selected trainees were trained to build, operate and maintain the RWH systems and gardens. Finally, the pilot plants were monitored and evaluated to examine their social and technological feasibility.

The incidence of oral cancer is increasing. Cases often present too late for treatment to be successful due to lack of awareness of the disease and reluctance to access services. The objective of this project was to implement a social marketing oral cancer pilot case-finding service for an at-risk population. The project used specific awareness-raising techniques in a defined catchment population to engage with those at risk from oral cancer and encourage them to seek early case-finding and diagnosis or elimination from follow-up, in a uniquely designed case-finding/referral intervention based on social marketing techniques. Of those who went on to make a case-finding appointment following an initial risk assessment, 96% kept their appointment and 10% were referred to specialist services. The system developed proved that it is possible to engage with a hard-to-reach target population at risk from a serious disease and draw significant numbers into case-finding/health service contact. This intervention illustrates the value of complex target-population tracking systems; shows the application of social marketing techniques in drawing in a target audience hard-to-reach; and how much social marketing is about the product or service rather than just the communication strategy.

Emschergenossenschaft and Lippeverband have developed a method to use radar-measured precipitation as an input for a real-time control of a combined sewer system containing several overflow structures. Two real-time control strategies have been developed and tested, one is solely volume-based, the other is volume and pollution-based. The system has been implemented in a pilot study in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. During the project the system was optimised and is now in constant operation. It was found, that the volume of combined sewage overflow could be reduced by 5 per cent per year. This was also found in simulations carried out in similar catchment areas. Most of the potential of improvement can already be achieved by local pollution-based control strategies.