This study examines how environmental issues have been addressed in the water sector in Brazil, within the context of activities of the Federal Government, generally, and those implemented under Bank sector operations, in particular. The core focus of the study lies in the management of water quality, as it affects both the users of raw water, and those who are primarily concerned with the disposal of wastewater. The report considers the following three sectoral areas concomitantly - water resources management, water supply and sanitation, and, the environment - thus limiting its review, and focus to those themes which are key to the over-arching issue of water quality. Water resources management in the country relied upon heavy investments in medium, and large scale projects that provided basic infrastructure for water uses. However, these have produced questionable impacts in terms of reducing poverty, and inequality. One of the reasons for this, has been the poor infrastructure management, which despite its importance, has been largely underestimated. While improvements in the utilization of existing infrastructure in the water sector remain critical, it needs to be complemented by incentives to both service providers, and water users. Moreover, low economic, environmental, and social returns from investments in the water sector, reflect the tendency to distract attention from the objectives in the design, and implementation of projects. Thus, an assessment of water quality goals is required, which should be based on systematic evaluations of the costs, and benefits of reaching alternative standards, and explicit social objectives.

Participatory management and the concrete adoption of technological practices by rural communities requires a major promotion and training effort at all levels. Therefore, planning for participation requires not only trained stakeholders in the field but also spaces for consensus that foster the development of collective responses and solutions through networked organizational agreements. Water is a vitally important right in agriculture, with enormous social and environmental implications. This means that it is valued both for its availability in quantity and quality for future generations and for the ecological services it provides. Regarding family farming, identifying water issues (access, human consumption, sanitary use, animal use, and irrigation) is undoubtedly the main priority demand of stakeholders in the fields. Water, along with land, are two of the most compelling and mobilizing issues for rural families and organizations. Its concrete approach and resolution act as a true "lever" and trigger for successive and progressive, linked and complementary rural development actions. Hence the importance of addressing the water issue with consistent technical elements. In this sense, this first manual—the complete work of which will be comprised of a series of four complementary manuals (water catchments, pipelines, storage, and distribution)—is designed and written for professionals, technicians, and experts working in extension and rural development. It draws on years of experience in addressing the water problem in rural Andean communities in the Northwest region of the Americas, both in research and extension activities. The work we are releasing today summarizes and systematizes, in a simple, practical, and accessible way, the different possibilities and technologies available for water collection, for the diverse natural sources of water supply existing in the territories where family farmers in the Andean region of our country live and produce. //Resumen: La gestión participativa y la adopción concreta de las prácticas tecnológicas por parte de las comunidades rurales, necesita de un gran esfuerzo de promoción y capacitación a todos los niveles. Es por eso que planificar la participación, requiere no solamente de actores capacitados en el territorio sino de espacios de consenso que propicien la construcción de respuestas y soluciones colectivas mediante acuerdos organizacionales que funcionen en red. El agua es un derecho con una importancia vital en la agricultura, y con una enorme implicancia social y ambiental. Esto determina que se la valore tanto por su disponibilidad en cantidad y calidad para las generaciones futuras como por los servicios ecológicos que presta. En lo que hace a la agricultura familiar, la identificación de la problemática del agua (acceso, consumo humano, uso sanitario, animal y riego) es, sin duda, la principal demanda priorizada por los actores en los territorios. El agua, junto con la tierra, son dos de los temas más convocantes y movilizadores para las familias y organizaciones rurales. Su concreto abordaje y resolución actúa como una verdadera “palanca” y disparador de sucesivas y progresivas acciones concatenadas y complementarias de desarrollo rural. De allí la trascendencia de abordar con consistentes elementos técnicos, la problemática hídrica. En este sentido, este primer manual - cuya obra completa estará integrada por una serie de cuatro manuales complementarios (captaciones, conducciones, almacenamiento y distribución)- está pensado y escrito para profesionales, técnicos e idóneos que se desempeñan en tareas de extensión y desarrollo rural; desde la perspectiva de recoger años de experiencia de trabajos relacionados con el abordaje del problema del agua en comunidades rurales andinas del NOA, tanto en actividades de investigación como de extensión. La obra que hoy damos a conocer, rescata y sistematiza de manera sencilla, práctica y accesible, las distintas posibilidades y tecnologías disponibles de captación, para las diversas fuentes naturales de provisión de agua existentes en los territorios, en los cuales habitan y producen los agricultores familiares de la región andina de nuestro país. | La gestión participativa y la adopción concreta de las prácticas tecnológicas por parte de las comunidades rurales, necesita de un gran esfuerzo de promoción y capacitación a todos los niveles. Es por eso que planificar la participación, requiere no solamente de actores capacitados en el territorio sino de espacios de consenso que propicien la construcción de respuestas y soluciones colectivas mediante acuerdos organizacionales que funcionen en red. El agua es un derecho con una importancia vital en la agricultura, y con una enorme implicancia social y ambiental. Esto determina que se la valore tanto por su disponibilidad en cantidad y calidad para las generaciones futuras como por los servicios ecológicos que presta. En lo que hace a la agricultura familiar, la identificación de la problemática del agua (acceso, consumo humano, uso sanitario, animal y riego) es, sin duda, la principal demanda priorizada por los actores en los territorios. El agua, junto con la tierra, son dos de los temas más convocantes y movilizadores para las familias y organizaciones rurales. Su concreto abordaje y resolución actúa como una verdadera “palanca” y disparador de sucesivas y progresivas acciones concatenadas y complementarias de desarrollo rural. De allí la trascendencia de abordar con consistentes elementos técnicos, la problemática hídrica. En este sentido, este primer manual - cuya obra completa estará integrada por una serie de cuatro manuales complementarios (captaciones, conducciones, almacenamiento y distribución)- está pensado y escrito para profesionales, técnicos e idóneos que se desempeñan en tareas de extensión y desarrollo rural; desde la perspectiva de recoger años de experiencia de trabajos relacionados con el abordaje del problema del agua en comunidades rurales andinas del NOA, tanto en actividades de investigación como de extensión. La obra que hoy damos a conocer, rescata y sistematiza de manera sencilla, práctica y accesible, las distintas posibilidades y tecnologías disponibles de captación, para las diversas fuentes naturales de provisión de agua existentes en los territorios, en los cuales habitan y producen los agricultores familiares de la región andina de nuestro país. | Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Pequeña Agricultura Familiar (CIPAF) | Fil: Garcia, Jose Antonio. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Agricultura Familiar Región NOA. Área de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Agricultura Familiar Región NOA; Argentina | Fil: Zamora Gomez, Juan Pablo. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Agricultura Familiar Región NOA. Área de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Agricultura Familiar Región NOA; Argentina | Fil: Bilbao, Lucas Nicolás. Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Instituto de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Agricultura Familiar Región NOA. Área de Investigación y Desarrollo Tecnológico para la Agricultura Familiar Región NOA; Argentina

A legislação ambiental brasileira busca minimizar os impactos negativos ou prejudiciais nas UCs pela presença de zonas de amortecimento no entorno destas. A área de estudo em questão compreende o Lajeado Cruzeiro, localizado no entorno do Parque Estadual Fritz Plau-mann, Concórdia, SC, que faz parte de uma região de elevada capacidade rural produtiva e, portanto, sensível a problemas de poluição ambiental decorrentes da atividade animal. O presente trabalho apresenta os dados de monitoramento de alguns parâmetros meteorológicos, físico-químicos e microbiológicos do lajeado Cruzeiro, e a indexação de seus valores, na forma do Índice de Qualidade de Água (IQA) para contextualização da qualidade hídrica e ambiental desta região. Essa ferramenta possibilita a observação do efeito da depuração natural do próprio curso d?água, garantida pela presença da unidade de conservação na região, resultando na melhoria do padrão de qualidade da água quando da proximidade da foz do lajeado. Brazilian environmental legislation seeks to minimize the negative or harmful impacts in protected areas by the presence of buffer zones in their surroundings. The study area comprises the Cruzeiro stream, located in the vicinity of the State Park Fritz Plaumann, Concordia, SC, which is part of a rural region of high productive capacity and thus sensitive to problems of environmental pollution resulting from farm animal activity. This paper presents the monitoring data of some meteorological, physico-chemical and microbiological parameters of Cruzeiro stream, and the indexation of their values in the Water Quality Index (WQI) to contextualize the water and environmental quality of the region. This tool allows the observation of the effect of natural purification of the watercourse itself, guaranteed by the presence of the protected area in the region, resulting in improved water quality standard when approaching the mouth of the stream.

The interactions between groundwater and surface water under a river island in South Korea were investigated. Sampling was focused on the western part of the island, where a groundwater heat pump system with groundwater monitoring wells has been installed. A riverside area was selected for the system because a high specific capacity was expected. However, surface-water intrusion remains a major concern, as the efficiency of the system can be impaired by groundwater temperature changes following surface-water infiltration. A combination of radon (²²²Rn) concentrations and microbial diversity was analyzed, along with hydraulic data. A process for estimating residence time based on ²²²Rn data and flow direction was developed to identify relationships with microbial diversity. The spatial distribution of ²²²Rn concentration was affected by fluctuations of river water levels caused by surrounding dam discharge and seasonal effects. Groundwater flowmeter data supported observations on these distributions. The estimated residence times indicated that river-water infiltration into the study site affected the groundwater flow direction. The microbial diversity, based on cluster analyses after pyrosequencing, showed significant variation with river flow direction and rainfall events, which was in accordance with the ²²²Rn tracer results. The combination of frequent ²²²Rn concentration measurements with microbial data allows better characterization of the dynamic interactions between groundwater and surface water.

Surface-water/groundwater exchange impacts water quality and budgets. In karst aquifers, these exchanges also play an important role in dissolution. Five years of river discharge data were analyzed and a transient groundwater flow model was developed to evaluate large-scale temporal and spatial variations of exchange between an 80-km stretch of the Suwannee River in north-central Florida (USA) and the karstic upper Floridan aquifer. The one-layer transient groundwater flow model was calibrated using groundwater levels from 59 monitoring wells, and fluxes were compared to the exchange calculated from discharge data. Both the numerical modeling and the discharge analysis suggest that the Suwannee River loses water under both low- and high-stage conditions. River losses appear greatest at the inside of a large meander, and the former river water may continue across the meander within the aquifer rather than return to the river. In addition, the numerical model calibration reveals that aquifer transmissivity is elevated within this large meander, which is consistent with enhanced dissolution due to river losses. The results show the importance of temporal and spatial variations in head gradients to exchange between streams and karst aquifers and dissolution of the aquifers.

This study aims to assess the sensitivity of river level estimations to the stream–aquifer exchanges within a hydrogeological model of the Upper Rhine alluvial aquifer (France/Germany), characterized as a large shallow aquifer with numerous hydropower dams. Two specific points are addressed: errors associated with digital elevation models (DEMs) and errors associated with the estimation of river level. The fine-resolution raw Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission dataset is used to assess the impact of the DEM uncertainties. Specific corrections are used to overcome these uncertainties: a simple moving average is applied to the topography along the rivers and additional data are used along the Rhine River to account for the numerous dams. Then, the impact of the river-level temporal variations is assessed through two different methods based on observed rating curves and on the Manning formula. Results are evaluated against observation data from 37 river-level points located over the aquifer, 190 piezometers, and a spatial database of wetlands. DEM uncertainties affect the spatial variability of the stream–aquifer exchanges by inducing strong noise and unrealistic peaks. The corrected DEM reduces the biases between observations and simulations by 22 and 51% for the river levels and the river discharges, respectively. It also improves the agreement between simulated groundwater overflows and observed wetlands. Introducing river-level time variability increases the stream–aquifer exchange range and reduces the piezometric head variability. These results confirm the need to better assess river levels in regional hydrogeological modeling, especially for applications in which stream–aquifer exchanges are important.

Interactions between groundwater and surface water in arid regions are complex, and recharge–discharge processes are often influenced by the hydrological regime, climate and geology. Traditional methods such as hydraulic gradient measuring by piezometers, differential discharge gauging and conservative tracer experiments, are often inadequate to capture the spatial and temporal variation of exchange rates. In this study, the distribution and the size of the overall groundwater inflow zone (GIZ) and the hyporheic inflow zone (HIZ) in the middle Heihe River Basin, northwest China, are characterized, and the relative inflow flux is estimated by high-resolution temperature measurements. Distributed temperature sensing (DTS) was used to measure the mixing temperatures of a 5-km reach of streambed with a spatial resolution of 0.5 m. The sampling interval was 0.25 m, and the temporal interval was 15 and 10 min at Pingchuan and Banqiao experimental sites, respectively. Two separate measurement periods in Pingchuan (Ping1, Ping2) captured different meteorological and stream-flow conditions. The results show that the number and the size range of the individual HIZs are greater than those of GIZs. Groundwater upwelling (GIZ) causes a larger decrease in river-water temperature with less inflow flux compared with the HIZ. The distribution pattern of HIZs and GIZs is influenced by the hydrodynamics of the river and the hydraulic permeability of the riverbed. High-resolution temperature variation based on DTS is an effective predictor of distributed inflows from groundwater upwelling and hyporheic exchange in an arid region.

Karst aquifers in subtropical regions are characterized by high variability of water availability and quality due to changes associated with rainy and dry seasons. An additional challenge for water management is the combination of surface-water and karst groundwater systems since high spatiotemporal dynamics cause high variability of water quality. In these cases, adapted protection strategies are required. In this study, a protection approach for the catchment of a river-water diversion point in a rural area in northern Vietnam is developed. The variability of water quality was evaluated by rainy and dry season synoptic surveys of suspended particles and microbial contamination at 49 sites and time series at three sets of paired sites under constant hydraulic conditions. The anthropogenic land-use activities in the catchment were mapped to identify potential contamination sources and to highlight the challenging combination of surface-water and karst groundwater management. The analyzed data indicate differences in water quality between the dry and rainy seasons and a higher influence on water quality from land use than from hydrologic conditions. Furthermore, the results suggest a high risk of contamination resulting from residential areas, agriculture, and livestock farming, and reveal the necessity of implementation of appropriate measures such as restricted farming and the hook-up of buildings to municipal sewage disposal. Finally, the data show that water quality can be improved by adjusting water withdrawals by the time of day. The applied methods can be transferred to other surface-water and karst groundwater systems in similar subtropical environments.

The hydrodynamic processes and impacts exerted by river–groundwater transformation need to be studied at regional and catchment scale, especially with respect to diverse geology and lithology. This work adopted an integrated method to study four typical modes (characterized primarily by lithology, flow subsystems, and gaining/losing river status) and the associated hydrodynamic processes and ecological impacts in the southern part of Junggar Basin, China. River–groundwater transformation occurs one to four times along the basin route. For mode classification, such transformation occurs: once or twice, controlled by lithological factors (mode 1); twice, impacted by geomorphic features and lithological structures (mode 2); and three or four times, controlled by both geological and lithological structures (modes 3 and 4). Results also suggest: (1) there exist local and regional groundwater flow subsystems at ~400 m depth, which form a multistage nested groundwater flow system. The groundwater flow velocities are 0.1–1.0 and <0.1 m/day for each of two subsystems; (2) the primary groundwater hydro-chemical type takes on apparent horizontal and vertical zoning characteristics, and the TDS of the groundwater evidently increases along the direction of groundwater flow, driven by hydrodynamic processes; (3) the streams, wetland and terminal lakes are the end-points of the local and regional groundwater flow systems. This work indicates that not only are groundwater and river water derived from the same source, but also hydrodynamic and hydro-chemical processes and ecological effects, as a whole in arid areas, are controlled by stream–groundwater transformation.

The groundwater abstracted at a well field near the Yamuna River in Central Delhi, India, has elevated ammonium (NH₄ ⁺) concentrations up to 35 mg/L and arsenic (As) concentrations up to 0.146 mg/L, constituting a problem with the provision of safe drinking and irrigation water. Infiltrating sewage-contaminated river water is the primary source of the NH₄ ⁺ contamination in the aquifer, leading to reducing conditions which probably trigger the release of geogenic As. These conclusions are based on the evaluation of six 8–27-m deep drillings, and 13 surface-water and 69 groundwater samples collected during seven field campaigns (2012–2013). Results indicate that losing stream conditions prevail and the river water infiltrates into the shallow floodplain aquifer (up to 16 m thickness), which consists of a 1–2-m thick layer of calcareous nodules (locally known as kankar) overlain by medium sand. Because of its higher hydraulic conductivity (3.7 × 10⁻³ m/s, as opposed to 3.5 × 10⁻⁴ m/s in the sand), the kankar layer serves as the main pathway for the infiltrating water. However, the NH₄ ⁺ plume front advances more rapidly in the sand layer because of its significantly lower cation exchange capacity. Elevated As concentrations were only observed within the NH₄ ⁺ plume indicating a causal connection with the infiltrating reducing river water.