Preface

While water management under changing climate is approached uniformly under well-documented theoretical approaches in developed countries, the same does not happen in developing countries because the application circumstances differ sharply. This book examines this issue via a multi-country, multi-aspect approach.

Climate change impacts natural resources, the most important of which is water. To protect water resources, it is critical to plan, conserve, and manage the river basin, which is a primary water source. This book discusses several aspects of water management in terms of their impact under particular circumstances with an emphasis on diversity extending to goal, country locality, and point of view.

Several authors belonging to research and public institutions from different parts of the world have collaborated in the technical discussion of this topic, reporting their experience and presenting advances in critical research for water resources planning, conservation, and management on selected river basins globally. The book contains five sections and fourteen chapters covering important research aspects of river basin management under a changing climate using field experiments, modeling, and analysis at various scales.

Section 1, "Introduction", includes an introductory chapter that presents an overview of water resources planning, management, conservation, and monitoring of any river basin that must address complex science and issues using available resources, tools, and techniques under a changing climate.

Section 2, "Water Resources Planning and Conservation", includes three chapters focusing on approaches to improve water productivity and livelihood resilience, the efficacy of artificially assembled boulder installations in improving migration routes for aquatic animals, and a hierarchical approach to fish conservation in semiarid landscapes.

Section 3, "Water Resources Management", includes four chapters on trend analysis of streamflow and rainfall, characteristics and process interactions in natural fluvial riparian ecosystems, the impact of hydraulic structures on water resources management, and assessing water availability for the environmental flow in selected river basins.

Section 4, "Water Quality Monitoring and Management", includes three chapters on monitoring conditions of rivers and streams using biological indices, pollution evaluation of industrial effluents from consolidated breweries, and assessment of water quality using physicochemical parameters and aquatic insect diversity.

Section 5, "Community's Role in River Basin Management", includes three chapters that discuss community participation in river basin management. They also discuss managing water demands and investigating water control, impacts, and sub-regional cooperation around a transboundary hydrological system.

This book contributes to the understanding of water resource communities and the potential approaches for planning, managing, conserving, and monitoring water resources in river basins under climate change.

The editors wish to thank all authors for their valuable contributions. We also wish to thank the staff at IntechOpen, particularly Author Service Manager Ms. Ana Cink for her assistance in finalizing the work.

> **Ram L. Ray** Prairie View, A&M University, Prairie View, USA

**Dionysia G. Panagoulia** National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece

**Nimal Shantha Abeysingha**

**1**

Section 1

Introduction

Rajarata University of Sri Lanka, Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka

Section 1 Introduction
