Preface

**Section 3 Water Resources Sustainability 197**

Arshad Ashraf

**VI** Contents

Peter C. Sakaris

**Hydrology 299**

Chapter 8 **Geospatial Analysis of Water Resources for Sustainable Agricultural Water Use in Slovenia 199**

Chapter 9 **Changing Hydrology of the Himalayan Watershed 221**

Fensholt, Jean Albergel and Jean-Claude Olivry

Chapter 12 **Current Challenges in Experimental Watershed**

Chapter 11 **A Review of the Effects of Hydrologic Alteration on Fisheries**

Wei-Zu Gu, Jiu-Fu Liu, Jia-Ju Lu and Jay Frentress

**Natural Resources in Regulated River Systems 273**

Chapter 10 **Impact of Drought and Land – Use Changes on Surface – Water Quality and Quantity: The Sahelian Paradox 243**

Matjaž Glavan, Rozalija Cvejić, Matjaž Tratnik and Marina Pintar

Luc Descroix, Ibrahim Bouzou Moussa, Pierre Genthon, Daniel Sighomnou, Gil Mahé, Ibrahim Mamadou, Jean-Pierre Vandervaere, Emmanuèle Gautier, Oumarou Faran Maiga, Jean-Louis Rajot, Moussa Malam Abdou, Nadine Dessay, Aghali Ingatan, Ibrahim Noma, Kadidiatou Souley Yéro, Harouna Karambiri, Rasmus

**and Biodiversity and the Management and Conservation of**

Limitations on the availabilityof water resourcesareamong the greatest challenges facing modern society, despite the fact that roughly 70% of the earth's surface is covered by water. Human society depends on liquid freshwater resources to meet drinking, sanitation and hy‐ giene, agriculture, and industry needs.Roughly 97% of the earth's surface and shallow sub‐ surface water is saline and about 2% is frozen in glaciers and polar ice. The remaining 1% is liquid freshwater present to some extent as surface waterin lakes and streams but predomi‐ nantlyoccurring as groundwater in subsurface aquifers.Improved management of these lim‐ ited freshwater resources is a global environmental priority.

Limitations on useable freshwater are driven by water quantity and quality, both of which are inextricably linked with population growth and, consequently, are expected to worsen in the foreseeable future.In 2005,approximately 35% of the world's population was estimat‐ ed to inhabit areas with chronic water limitations affecting survival and quality of life. The estimated world human population in 2005 was 6.5 billion. By the end of 2012, the world's population reached the 7 billion mark and is expected to exceed 9 billion circa 2050.Water quantity concernsreflectthe availability of freshwater relative to current and future use and, thus, increase with population size.Agriculture and industry dominant water quantity needs are estimated to represent more than 90% of current freshwater use. Anthropogenic environmental contamination further limits freshwater resources when concentrations ex‐ ceed water quality standards for drinking water and other human health applications.

Improved resource monitoring and better understanding of the anthropogenic threats to freshwater environments are critical to efficient management of these freshwater resources and ultimately to the survival and quality of life of the global human population.This book helps address the need for improved freshwater resource monitoring and threat assessment by presentingcurrent reviews and case studies focused on the fate and transport of contami‐ nants in the environment and on the sustainability of groundwater and surface-water re‐ sources. The book is divided into three sections, which address surface-water contaminant hydrology, groundwater contaminant hydrology and water resources sustainability around the world.

The first section, "Contaminant Hydrology: Surface Water," includes threechapters. Chapter 1 addresses the risk of environmental endocrine disruption posed by the release of numer‐ ous wastewater and personal care product contaminants throughout the world. Chapter 2 is a case studyin South Carolina, USA that illustrates the complex eco-hydrological interac‐ tions that can lead to accumulation of nuisance and toxic cyanobacteria-derived compounds in surface-water impoundments. Chapter 3 reviews currently available surface-water hy‐ drology and water quality models and presents case studies of model applications in two basins in Mississippi, USA.

The second section, "Contaminant Hydrology: Groundwater," includes four chapters ad‐ dressing the hydrology and modeling of a range of important groundwater contaminants. Chapters 4 and 5reviewthe environment controls on the occurrence and mobility of arsenic and mercury, respectively, in groundwater throughout the world. Chapter 6 is a case study of the application of a numerical mass balance modeling approach to assess nitrate migra‐ tion and attenuation in a groundwater system in California, USA. Similarly, Chapter 7 presents two case studies on the application of three dimensional contaminant transports modeling to assess aquifer vulnerability and the fate of jet fuel and other oil contaminants in groundwater in Pakistan.

The third section, "Water Resources Sustainability," includes five chapters, which addressa range of topics on water resource assessment, alteration impacts, and management. Chapter 8 describes the use of a generally applicable geospatial approach to assessingwater resources availability and drought risk in Slovenia. Chapter 9 describes the use of an integrated water‐ shed model to predict land-use impacts and improve water resource development in the Hi‐ malayan region. Chapter 10 provides an overview of the effects of drought and land-use changes on surface-water hydrodynamicsin the Sahelian region of West Africa. Chapter 11 reviews the impacts of stream regulation andhydrologic alterations and presents several management approaches. Finally, Chapter 12 provides an overview of common practice and historical weaknesses in experimental watershed hydrology and presents a case study of a new field experimental approach in China designed to address some of these limitations.

> **Paul M. Bradley, Ph.D.** Research Ecologist/Hydrologist U.S. Geological Survey USA

**Section 1**

**Contaminant Hydrology: Surface Water**

**Contaminant Hydrology: Surface Water**

drology and water quality models and presents case studies of model applications in two

The second section, "Contaminant Hydrology: Groundwater," includes four chapters ad‐ dressing the hydrology and modeling of a range of important groundwater contaminants. Chapters 4 and 5reviewthe environment controls on the occurrence and mobility of arsenic and mercury, respectively, in groundwater throughout the world. Chapter 6 is a case study of the application of a numerical mass balance modeling approach to assess nitrate migra‐ tion and attenuation in a groundwater system in California, USA. Similarly, Chapter 7 presents two case studies on the application of three dimensional contaminant transports modeling to assess aquifer vulnerability and the fate of jet fuel and other oil contaminants in

The third section, "Water Resources Sustainability," includes five chapters, which addressa range of topics on water resource assessment, alteration impacts, and management. Chapter 8 describes the use of a generally applicable geospatial approach to assessingwater resources availability and drought risk in Slovenia. Chapter 9 describes the use of an integrated water‐ shed model to predict land-use impacts and improve water resource development in the Hi‐ malayan region. Chapter 10 provides an overview of the effects of drought and land-use changes on surface-water hydrodynamicsin the Sahelian region of West Africa. Chapter 11 reviews the impacts of stream regulation andhydrologic alterations and presents several management approaches. Finally, Chapter 12 provides an overview of common practice and historical weaknesses in experimental watershed hydrology and presents a case study of a new field experimental approach in China designed to address some of these limitations.

**Paul M. Bradley, Ph.D.**

U.S. Geological Survey

USA

Research Ecologist/Hydrologist

basins in Mississippi, USA.

VIII Preface

groundwater in Pakistan.

**Chapter 1**

**Managing the Effects of Endocrine Disrupting**

A revolution in analytical instrumentation circa 1920 greatly improved the ability to charac‐ terize chemical substances [1]. This analytical foundation resulted in an unprecedented ex‐ plosion in the design and production of synthetic chemicals during and post-World War II. What is now often referred to as the 2nd Chemical Revolution has provided substantial soci‐ etal benefits; with modern chemical design and manufacturing supporting dramatic advan‐ ces in medicine, increased food production, and expanding gross domestic products at the national and global scales as well as improved health, longevity, and lifestyle convenience at the individual scale [1, 2]. Presently, the chemical industry is the largest manufacturing sec‐ tor in the United States (U.S.) and the second largest in Europe and Japan, representing ap‐ proximately 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in each of these countries [2]. At the turn of the 21st century, the chemical industry was estimated to be worth more than \$1.6 tril‐

During the first half of the 20th century, the chemical sector expanded rapidly, the chemical industry enjoyed a generally positive status in society, and chemicals were widely appreci‐ ated as fundamental to individual and societal quality of life. Starting in the 1960s, however, the environmental costs associated with the chemical industry increasingly became the fo‐ cus, due in part to the impact of books like "Silent Spring" [3] and "Our Stolen Future" [4] and to a number of highly publicized environmental disasters. Galvanizing chemical indus‐ try disasters included the 1976 dioxin leak north of Milan, Italy, the Love Canal evacuations in Niagara, New York beginning in 1978, and the Union Carbide leak in Bhopal, India in

Understanding the environmental impact of synthetic compounds is essential to any in‐ formed assessment of net societal benefit, for the simple reason that any chemical substance

> © 2013 Bradley and Kolpin; licensee InTech. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

© 2013 Bradley and Kolpin; licensee InTech. This is a paper distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons

**Chemicals in Wastewater-Impacted Streams**

Paul M. Bradley and Dana W. Kolpin

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/54337

**1. Introduction**

1984 [2].

Additional information is available at the end of the chapter

lion and to employ over 10 million people, globally [2].
