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Super teak is a fast grown species of teak (Tectona grandis Linn. f) derived from several clones. This has facilitated plantation rotations as short as 5 years. The main target of conventional plantation teak was initially for high value logs. Young teak wood from plantation forest usually has a small diameter. Moreover, the wood from very young stems is unsuitable for direct utilization, but advance wood processing technology can improve the wood properties of small diameter logs. This study aimed to assess the potential utilization of young super teak for high quality products namely furniture, flooring, and veneer, and assess the possibility of the use of manufacture waste for pulp paper and wood pellets as side products. The evaluation were carried out according to the National Indonesian Standard and other international standard requirements. 18 logs from wet (Bogor) and dry (Magetan) sites representing large, medium, and small diameter classes were collected. According to SNI 01-0608-1989 Timber for Furniture, 5-year-old super teak was suitable for furniture production. Furthermore, according to SNI 7732.1: 2011: Teak Veneer, the super teak was classified as Grade C because of the presence of sapwood, pinholes, tight and lose knots. According to Australian Timber Flooring Association, 5-year-old super teak was classifiesd as soft flooring group, the same group as mature teak & radiata pine. The young super teak was classified as Class Quality/Group II with very low active alkali consumption and low Kappa Number according to Indonesian wood fibre criteria for pulp and paper materials and Association of Pulp and Paper in Brazil. Finally, based on SNI 802: 2014 Wood Pellet, the super teak was recommended as by-products for utilising the wood waste. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intersection of water and social systems is strictly linked to society's adjacent political and economic contexts, which adds complexity to water-related issues, such as new demographical, market, and behavioural conditions. Traditional hydrological modelling approaches have often failed to include social aspects and their impacts on hydrological processes when representing human actions as fixed external conditions, thus, neglecting dynamic and heterogeneous behaviours that are intrinsically human. As an alternative, Agent-Based Models (ABMs) can represent the complexity of modelled water resources systems and their interchange with social contexts. The Brazilian Formoso River Basin (FRB) is a human-water system characterized by intense agricultural activity where conflicts among water users are present. Aligned with the principles of socio-hydrology, this study proposes an ABM to represent the interaction of natural and social systems in the Urubu River basin, a sub-basin of the FRB. The model considers farmers and regulatory authorities as agents who act according to the Belief-Desire-Intention (BDI) paradigm. Farmers are heterogeneous decision-makers with distinct collaborative profiles towards water management strategies. Finally, a methodology to extract information on farmers' behaviour towards cooperation from water demand data is presented, which might contribute to the conceptualization of more complex socio-hydrological models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small communities in semi-arid regions usually suffer from a lack of data to enable effective water management. This is the case for many rural communities in Brazil that rely on small reservoirs. The aim of this study is to extract information on water storage and water flows of Lagoa Cercada, a small reservoir in the Brazilian semi-arid region. Monthly data series of water levels and water quality were combined with remote sensing information to evaluate water storage in the reservoir. Inflow, withdrawal, and infiltration were calculated using water and salinity balance in the reservoir. The calculated capacity of Lagoa Cercada reservoir was 1.14 million cubic meters. However, using satellite imagery instead of drone imagery resulted in a 51 % difference in the estimation of storage capacity. Additionally, Lagoa Cercada's water withdrawal has not returned to the same amount as before the drought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change has modified global and local water cycle patterns inducing more intense and severe drought events. In the Ceará state (Northeast Brazil), a semiarid region very vulnerable to droughts, groundwater acts as a strategic reserve to ensure water security for small rural communities. Well drilling jointly with the building of dams and cisterns are the main policy performed by the public authority to cope with the droughts. This study performed a preliminary qualitative analysis to investigate the effects of dam building in the piezometric level of an alluvial aquifer in the Ceará state during the most recent drought (2012–2016). The micro-basins of the Algodão and Forquilha creek were selected as study area, in which the alluvial aquifer has been monitored by Funceme since 2010. The alluvial aquifer was extensively exploited for local agriculture before the drought (2012–2016) due to public policies of well drilling (2001–2002). During the most recent drought, the construction of new dams, coupled with reduced rainfall, compromised the recharge of the alluvial aquifer. We evaluate these effects through the groundwater level. The results revealed a continuous drawdown of groundwater in the monitored wells. Since 2017 the piezometric level started to rise, however, the graphs reveal a different behavior of the piezometric levels monitored after the latest drought, with sudden changes between the periods of recharge and drawdown of the alluvial aquifer. Field diagnostics with local stakeholders revealed how the latest drought changed the dynamics of the activities developed by the rural communities. Before the drought the aquifer supplied the local agriculture. The drought has affected the recharge of the alluvial aquifer and compromised local agriculture. Local stakeholders have adapted, and agriculture has been replaced by livestock. The heterogeneity of this environment and of its water users requires efficient management policies adapted for the local physical and socioeconomic conditions to avoid overexploitation and maintain the recharge of the alluvial aquifer. These policies at the local scale can be the identification of local actors who are willing to develop their own management of surface and groundwater resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of stable isotopes in the precipitation of Ceará was conducted on monthly rainfall samples between 2011 and 2019 and on daily rainfall samples between 2018 and 2019 in order to support the global knowledge of hydrological processes in semi-arid regions given the scarcity of such data in the Northeast of Brazil. Results showed that the frequency of rainfall sampling in semi-arid regions may induce an isotopic bias, due to the partial evaporation from the water collectors during monthly storage causing isotopic fractionation. In the absence of adequate data processing, this bias may lead to a wrong definition of the Local Meteoric Water Line (LMWL), which can have major consequences on the understanding of groundwater recharge processes. The processing of the monthly isotopic data (elimination of the evaporated data) and the analysis of daily data highlighted that the LMWL of Quixeramobim is characterized by a y -intercept value greater than + 12 ‰, indicating that rainwater is composed of vapours from marine origin, but also from continental recycling. Analysis of δ18 O monthly variations in relation to climatic factors suggested the importance of convective systems and relative humidity in the control of the isotopic composition of precipitation in a semi-arid tropical region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rainwater harvesting systems (RHS) are a relevant alternative of water supply in urban areas with increasing water demand and limited water availability. But these systems depend on several parameters that present uncertainties as well-characterized uncertainties whose probability functions are known and deep uncertainty factors that doesn't have analytical representation of their variability. This study evaluates the influence of water demand, tariff and discount rate (deep uncertain factors) on the feasibility of RHS for different scenarios of uncertainties. The systems were evaluated using the following performance criteria: Satisfied Demand, Reliability, Percentage of Rainwater Harvesting, Net Present Value, Net Present Value Volume and Benefit Cost Rate. We simulated the RHS performance for sixteen system configurations, comprised of eight categories of residential buildings according to representative water consumption (ranging from 4.748 to 44.673 m 3 per month) and two typical catchment areas for each of the eight groups of demands (ranging from 60 to 400 m 2) in the city of Rio Verde located in the central of Brazil. Each system was evaluated under the context of 1000 States of the World (SOWs) defined using the Latin Hypercube Sampling (LHS) method (in the case of the deep uncertainty factors) and bootstrapping resampling (for precipitation). Results showed slight difference on performance criteria among precipitation scenarios, maybe due to the fact that the synthetic rainfall series preserved the pattern and the total rainfall volume among the series which is reasonable for the location. However, the water tariff and discount rate showed a significant influence in the performance criteria confirming the relevance of deep uncertainty factors in the evaluation of RHS performances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]