Chapter 16 Managing Fresh Water for People and Nature

Discussion Questions

1. Given the dependence of society on freshwater resources, is establishing protected areas an appropriate solution to the issues that face freshwater ecosystems? What are the pros and cons of prohibiting all or certain kinds of land and water uses in upstream areas to provide sufficient amounts of clean drinking water to cities downstream?
2. It is often said that dams ultimately increase the risk to humans of flood damage and destruction. Why might this be the case?
3. Many experts feel that the next great global shortage will be of water. Can we learn anything from the energy and oil crises that might provide ideas for effectively dealing with forthcoming water shortages?

Group Projects

• Investigate freshwater ecosystems in your local area. For each of three ecosystems or distinct areas, discuss the major threats to biodiversity and ecosystem services. What solutions have been proposed, and how well does each of these potential solutions balance the demands of people with those of other species?
  
  
• Use the National Inventory of Dams and other Internet sources to identify two dams of very different sizes. Compare these dams in terms of their likely effects on people and on freshwater ecosystems. Rank by order of importance the top five benefits of each dam. Also rank by order of importance the top five drawbacks of each dam. Consider the sizes and ages of the dams, the safety risks they pose for human lives and property downstream, whether they have structures in place to facilitate fish passage, the types and amounts of habitats they flood, their effects on recreational opportunities, and so on.
  
  
• Go to the United Nations FAO AQUASTAT database website. Select the main country database. Under “Water use,” select “Water withdrawal by sector.” Choose three developing nations (at least one of them should be India or China) and three developed nations (one of them should be the United States). Check the box for the “Latest values only” and then hit “Search.” Discuss how the percentages of withdrawals for agricultural, industrial, and municipal purposes compare between the selected developed and developing nations and how and why these patterns might change over time.
  
  
• The expected life span of dams is 50 years, after which their usefulness declines (due to the buildup of sediments behind the dam) and failure becomes a growing risk unless expensive repairs are made. Keeping this in mind, go to the United Nations FAO AQUASTAT database website. From the dams database, select the names of three developing nations (at least one of them should be India or China) and three developed nations (one of them should be the United States). For each nation, summarize the number of dams as well as the distributions of dam age, height, and reservoir capacity. Discuss how the number, size, and age of dams compare between the selected developed and developing nations as well as how the environmental and economic challenges might differ between your samples of developed versus developing nations.
  
  
• Visit the website for your local water district and investigate where the drinking water (tap water) in your city or region comes from. Use the Internet to research the major threats to water quantity and quality in the watersheds or groundwater aquifers that source your city’s water. Be forewarned—one possible lesson of this project is that finding this information might be very challenging. Reflect on what it says about society’s relationship to nature that it is so difficult to learn where your water comes from and what threats that water supply faces.

Useful Websites

• AQUASTAT is the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) database on water resources, water uses, and agricultural water management. http://www.fao.org/nr/water/aquastat/main/index.stm


• Aqueduct hosted by the World Resources Institute is a rich resource providing maps and data quantifying the risks to freshwater around the globe. http://www.wri.org/our-work/project/aqueduct


• Environment Canada's National Water Research Institute collects, collates, and distributes data from monitoring efforts that are designed to detect ecosystem change. http://www.ec.gc.ca/inre-nwri


• National Inventory of Dams provides locations, general information, and hazard ratings for all dams in the United States that exceed certain minimum size or hazard criteria. http://nid.usace.army.mil


• Ramsar Convention on Wetlands website provides background on the Ramsar Convention, a library of related technical reports, and the list of Ramsar sites. http://www.ramsar.org


• Urban Water Blueprint is a database and visualization tool hosted by The Nature Conservancy. Click any city on the map to learn the city's sources of water, risks and conservation solutions. http://water.nature.org/waterblueprint/


• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Wetlands website provides information about the value and protection of wetlands in the U.S. http://www.epa.gov/owow/wetlands


• U.S. National Park Service provides information and photos from the Elwha River Restoration project. http://www.nps.gov/olym/naturescience/elwha-ecosystem-restoration.htm


• U.S. National Wild and Scenic Rivers System provides information about the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act and a list of designated rivers searchable by state or by river. http://www.rivers.gov/


• Water Footprint Network provides data concerning the water footprints of different nations and a personal water footprint calculator. http://www.waterfootprint.org

Suggested Readings for In-class Discussion

• Acreman M, Arthington AH, Colloff MJ, Couch C, Crossman ND, et al. (2014) Environmental flows for natural, hybrid, and novel riverine ecosystems in a changing world. Front Ecol Environ 12: 466-473.
  
  
• Chessman BC (2013) Do protected areas benefit freshwater species? A broad-scale assessment for fish in Australia's Murray–Darling Basin. J Appl Ecol 50: 969-976.
  
  
• Martinuzzi S, Januchowski-Hartley SR, Pracheil BM, McIntyre PB, Plantinga AJ, et al. (2014) Threats and opportunities for freshwater conservation under future land use change scenarios in the United States. Global Change Biol 20: 113-124. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12383/full (open access)
  
  
• McDonald RI, Weber K, Padowski J, Flörke M, Schneider C, et al. (2014) Water on an urban planet: Urbanization and the reach of urban water infrastructure. Global Environ Change 27: 96-105. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959378014000880 (open access)
  
  
• Ziv G, Baran E, Nam S, Rodríguez-Iturbe I, Levin SA (2012) Trading-off fish biodiversity, food security, and hydropower in the Mekong River Basin. PNAS 109: 5609-5614. http://www.pnas.org/content/109/15/5609.short (open access)