A Comparative Analysis of Wastewater Reuse as a Possible Solution to Drought Crisis

Recent decrease in rainfall in Israel has caused severe damage to both the farmers as well as to the national economy. During drought years there is a need to either reduce the water consumption or alternatively increase supply by alternative methods (use of marginal water, desalination or water storage). Because agricultural water use is considered as the marginal user of water in Israel, it is also the first segment that suffers from water allotments cut. The uncertainty involved with this process caused farmers to move to less profitable crops which are associated with short term decisions and are less capital intensive. This is especially true with respect to crops which their capital inputs have low salvage value. In this research we examine alternative solutions. We concentrate on wastewater re-use because of its popularity in Israel due to its external environmental benefits, and compare it to alternative solutions such as water storage, desalination, water price increase or compensation for losses. Wastewater can be thought of as a certain supply source which can be also stored during the winter in order to be used in the summer. This research shows that while uncertainty does not count, there is no justification in wastewater reclamation. This conclusion changes when we take uncertainty into account through its implied damages. We find that wastewater use is, in general, more cost effective than water storage. We draw conditions at which waste water are preferable to other means. Transfer cost is the limiting factor of waste water use

Cost Benefit Analysis of Wastewater Reuse in Israel

The state of Israel has semi arid climate conditions. In order to operate a desirable and productive agricultural sector, demand and supply of water need to be carefully and thoughtfully managed. This paper deals with one method of supply management, namely wastewater reuse for agricultural purposes

Erosionabilidad del suelo a lo largo del gradiente climático Coll de Rates - Benidorm, Alicante

[Resumen] Se estudia la influencia del clima sobre la erosionabilidad de los suelos mediante la cuantificación de la estabilidad de los agregados por medio del test de Emerson, por impactos de gotas (CNO y TOI) y por ultrasonidos (UD) a lo largo del gradiente climático Coll de Rates-Benidorm. En todos los suelos estudiados la estabilidad de los agregados es muy elevada, lo que hace difícil encontrar diferencias apreciables entre zonas de estudio. Las distintas historias de uso del suelo (incendios, pastoreo, explotación de la biomasa, etc.) ha dado lugar a la inexistencia de la influencia del clima sobre la erosionabilidad de los suelos.[Abstract] The influence of climate on soil erodibility is studied by means of aggregate stability measurements with the Emerson, drop impacts· (CNO y TOI) and ultrasound (UD) tests along the Coll de Rates-Benidorm climatological gradient. The soils have a very high aggregate stability, and this is the reason why there are not clear differences between study zones. The different past land uses (forest fire, grazing, wood exploitation, etc./) have induced the non existence of the influence of climate on soil erodibility

The floral biology of the olive: effect of flower number, type and distribution on fruitset

10 pages, 1 figure, 5 tables, 15 references.The effect of flower number and distribution on the fruiting behavior of various olive cultivars was studied over a period of 10 years. The number of staminate flowers within each cultivar had no significant effect on fruitset. Pre-bloom removal of up to 50% of the flowers did not affect fruitset. Variation in prebloom flower-removal position resulted in similar fruitset per inflorescence, whether flowers were removed along the inflorescence axis or from the distal half of each inflorescence. Removal of half of the inflorescences resulted in doubling the fruit set on the remaining ones, except in cv. Koronaiki which normally sets more than one fruit on most of its inflorescences. The distal fruitful inflorescence set more than one fruit (mostly two) on 70–80% of the shoots of various cultivars. In cv. Santa Caterina a clear increase in fruitset per shoot was observed when 80% of the flowers per inflorescence were removed. In this cultivar the lateral flowers were significantly more fruitful than the king flower. This however, was not the case with cv. Manzanillo.Peer reviewe

Evaluation of the present information on the mechanisms leading to flower bud induction, evocation and differentiation in olea europaea

7 páginas, 1 figura, 2 tablas, 16 referencias.-- The "5th International Symposium on Olive Growing" will be held in Izmir, Turkey between 26 September- 2 October, 2004.-- Fué leído en el citado simposio por Shimon Lavee y por motivos desconocidos no figura en el libro de actas.The lack of regularity in reproductive organ development leading in many cases to severe alternate bearing is one of the major problems and drawbacks in today’s economy of the olive industry. Although a considerable amount of work has been devoted during the second half of the last century to this subject, our understanding of the metabolism leading to flower bud differentiation and ability to control alternate bearing is still limited. The genetic potential to induce flower buds is environmentally dependent. Temperature was found the most eminent environmental factor to affect the metabolism leading to flower bud induction. Specific but not yet clearly defined temperatures in early summer on one hand and relatively low winter temperature gradually fluctuating with warm ones in the winter are essential for inducing the metabolic pass-ways initiating the sequence of processes leading to the formation of flower buds. Changes in the RNA content of lateral buds expected to develop inflorescences in the spring was shown to occur already in the fall. Thus, some workers suggested that the low winter temperatures act as a dormancy breaking agent of pre differentiated buds. On the other hand, these same buds were shown to grow vegetative when induced without or with unsuitable winter temperature. This could be explained as dedifferentiation process however, no differentiated floral organs have been found in buds in the fall and no aborted secondary growing points in lateral buds have been found either. The presently available data indicate that neither summer-fall nor mid winter seasons could be individually responsible for flower bud initiation. The presently developing fruits on the trees were found to have a major affect on controlling the metabolism leading to reproductive development although they were shown to have no effect on the tree’s carboydrate level and only a minor one on the nitrogen balance. However, the protein composition of leaves on fruiting and non fruiting trees was found to be different with specific proteins developing in leaves of the fruiting trees and others on the non fruiting ones. Furthermore, chlorogenic acid, related to the cinnamic acid pass-way was found to accumulate in leaves of fruiting trees and to inhibit specifically winter differentiation. The messenger from the developing fruits to change the leaf metabolism is not yet entirely clear but believed to be specific gibberellins. Based on the present available data including the effect of harvest time on the following reproductive development and the amount of yield on vegetative growth, a two phase mechanism for reproductive bud development in the olive could be suggested. The initial developing bud of the olive is suggested to be indifferent. During the “off” year, when tha plant has normalized its situation after a heavy crop, the buds receive their initial induction to develop reproductive. Those buds which received their initial induction to differentiate reproductively will respond to the winter inductive conditions.Peer reviewe

Fruit load governs transpiration of olive trees

We tested the hypothesis that whole-tree water consumption of olives (Olea europaea L.) is fruit load-dependent and investigated the driving physiological mechanisms. Fruit load was manipulated in mature olives grown in weighing-drainage lysimeters. Fruit was thinned or entirely removed from trees at three separate stages of growth: early, mid and late in the season. Tree-scale transpiration, calculated from lysimeter water balance, was found to be a function of fruit load, canopy size and weather conditions. Fruit removal caused an immediate decline in water consumption, measured as whole-plant transpiration normalized to tree size, which persisted until the end of the season. The later the execution of fruit removal, the greater was the response. The amount of water transpired by a fruit-loaded tree was found to be roughly 30% greater than that of an equivalent low- or nonyielding tree. The tree-scale response to fruit was reflected in stem water potential but was not mirrored in leaf-scale physiological measurements of stomatal conductance or photosynthesis. Trees with low or no fruit load had higher vegetative growth rates. However, no significant difference was observed in the overall aboveground dry biomass among groups, when fruit was included. This case, where carbon sources and sinks were both not limiting, suggests that the role of fruit on water consumption involves signaling and alterations in hydraulic properties of vascular tissues and tree organs.</p

Fusion of Single View Soft k-NN Classifiers for Multicamera Human Action Recognition

Proceedings of: 5th International Conference on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems (HAIS 2010). San Sebastián, Spain, June 23-25, 2010This paper presents two different classifier fusion algorithms applied in the domain of Human Action Recognition from video. A set of cameras observes a person performing an action from a predefined set. For each camera view a 2D descriptor is computed and a posterior on the performed activity is obtained using a soft classifier. These posteriors are combined using voting and a bayesian network to obtain a single belief measure to use for the final decision on the performed action. Experiments are conducted with different low level frame descriptors on the IXMAS dataset, achieving results comparable to state of the art 3D proposals, but only performing 2D processing.This work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, CAM CONTEXTS (S2009/TIC-1485) and DPS2008-07029-C02-02Publicad

Physiological aspects of post harvest berry drop in certain grape varieties

Storage experiments were conduced with fruit of two grape varieties, Muscat of Hambourg and Dabouki.The drop of Muscat of Hambourg is a "dry drop" while the Dabouki has no definite drop. Shed berries in this latter variety were due mostly to mechanical injury.The dry drop due to an abscission layer was found to be a "physiological drop".This drop could be:Prevented by subjecting the fruit to cold store immediately after picking.Reduced by spraying the fruit 4 days before picking with 10-20 ppm of NAA or PCPA if storage has to be postponed for more than 36 hours.Growth regulators as well as delayed cold storage had no effect on the drop of Dabouki berries during storage.A mechanism for the shedding in varieties with a physiological drop was suggested