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Food security concerns, climate change impacts, and increased pressure on conventional water resources have encouraged the agricultural use of nonconventional water resources in the last decade. As a result, desalinated seawater (DSW) has already consolidated its position as an alternative source to increase the supply for crop irrigation in Spain and Israel, where farmers' acceptance is progressively on the rise. The first experiences in these regions highlighted that DSW agricultural use involves new agronomic, economic, and environmental challenges which require innovative research approaches and imply novel water management strategies. In this Special Issue, eight high-quality papers which present current research trials and study cases, covering a wide range of topics that are relevant when irrigating with DSW, have been selected. The papers came from the three regions of the world that currently have a massive agricultural DSW supply: Southeastern Spain, Israel, and the Canary Islands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbonyl sulfide (OCS), the most abundant sulfur-containing gas in the atmosphere, is used as a proxy for photosynthesis rate estimation. However, a large missing source of atmospheric OCS has been inferred. Sulfur isotope measurements (34S/32S ratio and δ34S) on OCS are a feasible tool to distinguish OCS sources from oceanic and anthropogenic emissions. Here we present the latitudinal (north–south) observations of OCS concentration and δ34S within Japan. The observed δ34S of OCS of 9.7 to 14.5‰ reflects source and sink effects. Particularly in winter, latitudinal decreases in δ34S values of OCS were found to be correlated with increases in OCS concentrations, resulting an intercept of (4.7 ± 0.8)‰ in the Keeling plot approach. This result implies the transport of anthropogenic OCS emissions from the Asian continent to the western Pacific by the Asian monsoon outflow. The estimated background δ34S of OCS in eastern Asia is consistent with the δ34S of OCS previously reported in Israel and the Canary Islands, suggesting that the background δ34S of OCS in the Northern Hemisphere ranges from 12.0 to 13.5‰. Our constructed sulfur isotopic mass balance of OCS revealed that anthropogenic sources, not merely oceanic sources, account for much of the missing source of atmospheric OCS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]