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Modern agriculture is underpinned by actual meteorological data registered using automated meteorological stations forming networks specifically created for advising purposes. In many cases, those data used to be accessible online by means of APIs (Application Programming Interface). One of the most common cases is the irrigation-advice weather network implemented with the aim of obtaining ETo values to be used in irrigation recommendations. However, those punctual values of ETo scattered throughout the territory do not allow to produce specific irrigation recommendations for each farm. The only way of disposing site-specific values of ETo is by compiling maps that describe its spatial variation. With this objective, a new dynamic procedure based on an existing regression-based technique of interpolation was proposed. Using the meteorological data registered at the end of each day, maximum and minimum temperature, maximum and minimum relative humidity, wind velocity, and radiation maps were interpolated and then, an ETo map was derived. The proposed procedure demonstrated a special adaptation capacity to the synoptic pattern of each day using some geographical features or others, as appropriate to explain the spatial variability of the interpolated meteorological variable. In those months where radiation plays a key role in the ETo value (growing season), ETo maps obtained were especially fine-grained in areas with significant relief. This procedure improved other contrasted methodologies they were compared with. The impact of using the nearest-weather-station ETo vs interpolated value on a daily water needs was investigated and near 10% average value of error was encountered in the case study.

It has been shown that soil management under organic farming can enhance soil organic carbon, thereby mitigating atmospheric greenhouse gas increases, but until now quantitative evaluations based on long term experiments are scarce, especially under Mediterranean conditions. Changes in soil organic carbon (SOC) content were examined in response to organic management with cover crops in a Mediterranean citrus plantation using 21 years of survey data. Soil organic carbon increase was more apparent 5 years after a land management change suggesting that, for citrus plantations on Mediterranean conditions, studies should be longer than five years in duration. Soil organic carbon sequestration rate did not significantly change during the 21 years of observation, with values ranging from -1.10 Mg C ha-1 y-1 to 1.89 Mg C ha-1 y-1. After 21 years, 61 Mg CO2 ha-1 were sequestered in long-lived soil C pools. These findings demonstrate that organic management is an effective strategy to restore or increase SOC content in Mediterranean citrus systems.

Abstract Agricultural irrigation is the major water consumer in the Mediterranean region. In response to the growing pressure on freshwater resources, more efficient irrigation technologies have been widely promoted. In this study, we assess the impact of the ongoing transition from flood to drip irrigation on future hydroclimatic regimes under various climate change scenarios, with a particular focus on actual evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge in the Mediterranean region of Valencia, Spain. Hydroclimatic predictions for the near‐term future (2020–2049) and the mid‐term future (2045–2074) were made under two emission scenarios (RCP 4.5 and RCP 8.5) using a hydrological model that was forced with data from five GCM‐RCM combinations and field‐based irrigation volume and frequency observations. Our findings suggest that climate change could lead to statistically significant changes in the regional hydroclimatic regime despite projection uncertainties. Major changes include a statistically significant decrease in mean groundwater recharge of up to −6.6% under flood irrigation and −9.3% under drip irrigation and contrasting changes in mean actual evapotranspiration for flood and drip irrigation in the order of +1% and −2.1%, respectively. Since sustainably available water resources in the Valencia region are entirely allocated, the expected changes and associated uncertainties create a challenging context for future water management. Our simulations further indicate that, rather than climate change, the choice of irrigation technique may have a greater impact on actual evapotranspiration and groundwater recharge. Our findings therefore highlight the importance of considering both climate change and irrigation technique when assessing future water resources in irrigated Mediterranean agriculture.

In this paper, we present and analyze a novel global database of soil infiltration measurements, the Soil Water Infiltration Global (SWIG) database. In total, 5023 infiltration curves were collected across all continents in the SWIG database. These data were either provided and quality checked by the scientists who performed the experiments or they were digitized from published articles. Data from 54 different countries were included in the database with major contributions from Iran, China, and the USA. In addition to its extensive geographical coverage, the collected infiltration curves cover research from 1976 to late 2017. Basic information on measurement location and method, soil properties, and land use was gathered along with the infiltration data, making the database valuable for the development of pedotransfer functions (PTFs) for estimating soil hydraulic properties, for the evaluation of infiltration measurement methods, and for developing and validating infiltration models. Soil textural information (clay, silt, and sand content) is available for 3842 out of 5023 infiltration measurements ( ∼ 76%) covering nearly all soil USDA textural classes except for the sandy clay and silt classes. Information on land use is available for 76 % of the experimental sites with agricultural land use as the dominant type ( ∼ 40%). We are convinced that the SWIG database will allow for a better parameterization of the infiltration process in land surface models and for testing infiltration models. All collected data and related soil characteristics are provided online in *.xlsx and *.csv formats for reference, and we add a disclaimer that the database is for public domain use only and can be copied freely by referencing it. Supplementary data are available at https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.885492 (Rahmati et al., 2018). Data quality assessment is strongly advised prior to any use of this database. Finally, we would like to encourage scientists to extend and update the SWIG database by uploading new data to it.

Neospora caninum es un parásito protozoario del filo Apicomplexa que ha sido reconocido como causante de abortos y fallas reproductiva en el ganado de todo el mundo. Aunque en Colombia existen algunos estudios sobre la seroprevalencia de esta enfermedad, la información sigue siendo limitada. Objetivo: establecer la seroprevalencia de N. caninum en vacas lecheras del municipio de Tuta (Boyacá, Colombia). Materiales y Métodos: se muestrearon 375 animales. Las muestras se procesaron bajo la técnica de ELISA indirecta y se realizó un análisis estadístico con la prueba de chi-cuadrado de asociación-independencia para determinar si existía relación entre la presencia de anticuerpos contra N. caninum y las diferentes variables reproductivas. Resultados: el 52% de los individuos fueron positivos a anticuerpos contra N. caninum y la única variable reproductiva que presentó relación estadística con la presencia del protozoo fue la repetición de celo; por otra parte, no existió relación entre edad y raza de los bovinos y la presencia de N. caninum. Conclusión: la seroprevalencia es elevada si se compara con los datos reportados con anterioridad en otras regiones del país; no obstante, estos resultados no demostraron la presencia de enfermedad en los animales analizados, pero sí la evidencia antigénica, lo que sugiere que en algún momento de la vida se infectaron con el agente y promovieron la formación de anticuerpos específicos.

Socio-economic costs of drought are progressively increasing worldwide due to undergoing alterations of hydro-meteorological regimes induced by climate change. Although drought management is largely studied in the literature, traditional drought indexes often fail at detecting critical events in highly regulated systems, where natural water availability is conditioned by the operation of water infrastructures such as dams, diversions, and pumping wells. Here, ad hoc index formulations are usually adopted based on empirical combinations of several, supposed-to-be significant, hydro-meteorological variables. These customized formulations, however, while effective in the design basin, can hardly be generalized and transferred to different contexts. In this study, we contribute FRIDA (FRamework for Index-based Drought Analysis), a novel framework for the automatic design of basin-customized drought indexes. In contrast to ad hoc empirical approaches, FRIDA is fully automated, generalizable, and portable across different basins. FRIDA builds an index representing a surrogate of the drought conditions of the basin, computed by combining all the relevant available information about the water circulating in the system identified by means of a feature extraction algorithm. We used the Wrapper for Quasi-Equally Informative Subset Selection (W-QEISS), which features a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm to find Pareto-efficient subsets of variables by maximizing the wrapper accuracy, minimizing the number of selected variables, and optimizing relevance and redundancy of the subset. The preferred variable subset is selected among the efficient solutions and used to formulate the final index according to alternative model structures. We apply FRIDA to the case study of the Jucar river basin (Spain), a drought-prone and highly regulated Mediterranean water resource system, where an advanced drought management plan relying on the formulation of an ad hoc state index is used for triggering drought management measures. The state index was constructed empirically with a trial-and-error process begun in the 1980s and finalized in 2007, guided by the experts from the Confederación Hidrográfica del Júcar (CHJ). Our results show that the automated variable selection outcomes align with CHJ's 25-year-long empirical refinement. In addition, the resultant FRIDA index outperforms the official State Index in terms of accuracy in reproducing the target variable and cardinality of the selected inputs set.

Resumen: Introducción: El aumento de homocisteína en sangre constituye un conocido factor de riesgo cardiovascular. Los pacientes epilépticos en tratamiento crónico con fármacos antiepilépticos pueden presentar niveles más elevados de homocisteína y, en consecuencia, un potencial aumento del riesgo cardiovascular. Material y métodos: Estudio observacional de casos y controles para la comparación de los niveles plasmáticos de homocisteína, ácido fólico y vitamina B12. Resultados: Se reclutó a un total de 88 sujetos, 52 de ellos epilépticos y 36 controles. Se observó una tendencia a niveles de homocisteína más elevados (p = 0,084) en los pacientes epilépticos y unos valores de ácido fólico más bajos (p

Introduction: Increased blood homocysteine levels are a known cardiovascular risk factor. Epileptic patients on long-term treatment with antiepileptic drugs may present higher homocysteine levels and, consequently, a potential increase in cardiovascular risk. Material and methods: We conducted an observational case-control study to compare plasma levels of homocysteine, folic acid, and vitamin B12. Results: Our study included a total of 88 subjects: 52 patients with epilepsy and 36 controls. Epileptic patients showed higher homocysteine levels (P = .084) and lower levels of folic acid (P

The inclusion of climate change in water planning is not an easy task, due to its high uncertainty. In Spain, climate change effect on water resources is quantified through the application of an only reduction coefficient to the historical time series of inflows in every river basin district. This paper is intended to provide further insight into this topic, using the new climate change scenarios and three conceptual rainfall-runoff models to simulate future inflows for the Jucar river basin. Our results suggest that the headwaters basins are prone to suffer higher rainfall reductions and temperature increases than the Mediterranean basins. Moreover, great uncertainty about resources’ reduction exists, which could be significantly greater than current water plan projections. In our opinion, system’s resilience should be confronted with a plausible rank of climatic stress conditions, to identify vulnerabilities and propose adaptation measures.

Finding ways to improve the efficiency in water usage is one of the most important challenges in integrated water resources management. One of the most promising solutions is the use of scarcity-based pricing policies. This contribution presents a procedure to design efficient pricing policies based on the opportunity cost of water at the basin scale. Time series of the marginal value of water are obtained using a stochastic hydro-economic model. Those series are then post-processed to define step pricing policies, which depend on the state of the system at each time step. The case study of the Mijares River basin system (Spain) is used to illustrate the method. The results show that the application of scarcity-based pricing policies increases the economic efficiency of water use in the basin, allocating water to the highest-value uses and generating an incentive for water conservation during the scarcity periods. The resulting benefits are close to those obtained with the economically optimal decisions.

Climate and land use change (global change) impacts on groundwater systems cannot be studied in isolation. Land use and land cover (LULC) changes have a great impact on the water cycle and contaminant production and transport. Groundwater flow and storage are changing in response not only to climatic changes but also to human impacts on land uses and demands, which will alter the hydrologic cycle and subsequently impact the quantity and quality of regional water systems. Predicting groundwater recharge and discharge conditions under future climate and land use changes is essential for integrated water management and adaptation. In the Mancha Oriental system (MOS), one of the largest groundwater bodies in Spain, the transformation from dry to irrigated lands during the last decades has led to a significant drop of the groundwater table, with the consequent effect on stream–aquifer interaction in the connected Jucar River. Understanding the spatial and temporal distribution of water quantity and water quality is essential for a proper management of the system. On the one hand, streamflow depletion is compromising the dependent ecosystems and the supply to the downstream demands, provoking a complex management issue. On the other hand, the intense use of fertilizer in agriculture is leading to locally high groundwater nitrate concentrations. In this paper we analyze the potential impacts of climate and land use change in the system by using an integrated modeling framework that consists in sequentially coupling a watershed agriculturally based hydrological model (Soil and Water Assessment Tool, SWAT) with a groundwater flow model developed in MODFLOW, and with a nitrate mass-transport model in MT3DMS. SWAT model outputs (mainly groundwater recharge and pumping, considering new irrigation needs under changing evapotranspiration (ET) and precipitation) are used as MODFLOW inputs to simulate changes in groundwater flow and storage and impacts on stream–aquifer interaction. SWAT and MODFLOW outputs (nitrate loads from SWAT, groundwater velocity field from MODFLOW) are used as MT3DMS inputs for assessing the fate and transport of nitrate leached from the topsoil. Three climate change scenarios have been considered, corresponding to three different general circulation models (GCMs) for emission scenario A1B that covers the control period, and short-, medium- and long-term future periods. A multi-temporal analysis of LULC change was carried out, helped by the study of historical trends (from remote-sensing images) and key driving forces to explain LULC transitions. Markov chains and European scenarios and projections were used to quantify trends in the future. The cellular automata technique was applied for stochastic modeling future LULC maps. Simulated values of river discharge, crop yields, groundwater levels and nitrate concentrations fit well to the observed ones. The results show the response of groundwater quantity and quality (nitrate pollution) to climate and land use changes, with decreasing groundwater recharge and an increase in nitrate concentrations. The sequential modeling chain has been proven to be a valuable assessment tool for supporting the development of sustainable management strategies.

The implementation of the EU Water Framework Directive demands participatory water resource management approaches. Decision making in groundwater quantity and quality management is complex because of the existence of many independent actors, heterogeneous stakeholder interests, multiple objectives, different potential policies, and uncertain outcomes. Conflicting stakeholder interests have often been identified as an impediment to the realisation and success of water regulations and policies. The management of complex groundwater systems requires the clarification of stakeholders' positions (identifying stakeholder preferences and values), improving transparency with respect to outcomes of alternatives, and moving the discussion from the selection of alternatives towards the definition of fundamental objectives (value-thinking approach), which facilitates negotiation. The aims of the study are to analyse the potential of the multi-attribute value theory for conflict resolution in groundwater management and to evaluate the benefit of stakeholder incorporation into the different stages of the planning process, to find an overall satisfying solution for groundwater management. The research was conducted in the Mancha Oriental groundwater system (Spain), subject to intensive use of groundwater for irrigation. A complex set of objectives and attributes was defined, and the management alternatives were created by a combination of different fundamental actions, considering different implementation stages and future changes in water resource availability. Interviews were conducted with representative stakeholder groups using an interactive platform, showing simultaneously the consequences of changes in preferences to the alternative ranking. Results show that the approval of alternatives depends strongly on the combination of measures and the implementation stages. Uncertainties in the results were notable, but did not influence the alternative ranking heavily. The expected reduction in future groundwater resources by climate change increases the conflict potential. The implementation of the method in a very complex case study, with many conflicting objectives and alternatives and uncertain outcomes, including future scenarios under water limiting conditions, illustrates the potential of the method for supporting management decisions.

The use of methodologies that explicitly take into account inflow uncertainties in the optimization of the management of water resource systems is hindered by the lack of a generalized software. A general-purpose package named SDP_GAMS has been developed, facilitating the resolution of the stochastic dynamic programming problem. It obtains optimal policies, associated optimal benefits and optimal decisions in response to specific inflow time series and demands. The tool has been tested in the Mijares River basin (Spain), with two reservoirs and four major demands. Inflow variability has been described by the use of a 1-lag Markov chain, and a 91-class two-reservoir discrete mesh was used in calculations. Polynomial economic demand curves were used. The results showed that the use of the SDP hydro-economic modelling procedure obtains optimal policies taking into account inflow uncertainty, which can lead to an improvement in the efficiency of water resources systems.

Multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methods are increasingly used to facilitate both rigorous analysis and stakeholder involvement in natural and water resource planning. Decision-making in that context is often complex and multi-faceted with numerous trade-offs between social, environmental and economic impacts. However, practical applications of decision-support methods are often too technically oriented and hard to use, understand or interpret for all participants. The learning of participants in these processes is seldom examined, even though successful deliberation depends on learning. This paper analyzes the potential of an interactive MCDA framework, the decision analysis interview (DAI) approach, for facilitating stakeholder involvement and learning in groundwater management. It evaluates the results of the MCDA process in assessing land-use management alternatives in a Finnish esker aquifer area where conflicting land uses affect the groundwater body and dependent ecosystems. In the assessment process, emphasis was placed on the interactive role of the MCDA tool in facilitating stakeholder participation and learning. The results confirmed that the structured decision analysis framework can foster learning and collaboration in a process where disputes and diverse interests are represented. Computer-aided interviews helped the participants to see how their preferences affected the desirability and ranking of alternatives. During the process, the participants' knowledge and preferences evolved as they assessed their initial knowledge with the help of fresh scientific information. The decision analysis process led to the opening of a dialogue, showing the overall picture of the problem context and the critical issues for the further process.

La promoción de actividad física diaria en los jóvenes tal como el desplazamiento activo al colegio (usar medios de transporte activos tales como andar o bicicleta), puede tener importantes beneficios para la salud. El objetivo fue analizar la asociación entre el desplazamiento activo al colegio y variables de salud positiva y estrés en niños españoles. Participaron 366 niños (172 niñas) procedentes de cuatro colegios, entre los 7 y los 11 años de edad (media±DT 9,3±0,8 años). Se utilizó un cuestionario semanal sobre el modo de desplazamiento al colegio que ha sido previamente sugerido en la literatura científica denominado Modo y frecuencia de desplazamiento hacia y desde el colegio. La felicidad subjetiva, el estado de bienestar subjetivo de tipo cognitivo y afectivo, el optimismo disposicional y el estrés se evaluaron con los cuestionarios de versión en castellano de Subjective Happiness Scale, Satisfaction with Life Scale y Positive and Negative Affect Schedule respectivamente. El desplazamiento activo al colegio se asocia de forma inversa con el estrés (ß =-0,235±0,079, p=,004) ajustando por sexo, edad y nivel de estudios de la madre. Los niños que se desplazan con mayor frecuencia de forma activa al colegio tienen un menor nivel de estrés. Son necesarias medidas que fomenten el desplazarse de forma activa al colegio, por los beneficios positivos que tiene sobre la salud física y emocional, vislumbrándose como una posibilidad de encauzar adecuadamente el estrés en los niños españoles.

Las infecciones originadas por bacterias del género Salmonella son una de las principales causas de pérdidas económicas en la industria avícola, se caracterizan generalmente por la presentación de cuadros diarreicos y septicémicos que llevan a las aves a una marcada disminución en la producción y a la muerte. En Colombia, debido al efecto negativo que produce Salmonella spp. en las aves, y con el objetivo de poder controlar la enfermedad, se utiliza una gran variedad de productos antimicrobianos, de los cuales no se posee suficiente información acerca de su comportamiento en cuanto a sensibilidad y resistencia frente a las cepas de Salmonella spp. de campo. El objetivo de este estudio fue determinar la respuesta de 20 cepas de Salmonellas grupo D (móviles e inmóviles) aisladas de aves ponedoras comerciales en Colombia frente a diferentes antimicrobianos. Para su aislamiento y tipificación se utilizaron técnicas microbiológicas convencionales, pruebas bioquímicas, serológicas y pruebas de susceptibilidad a los antibióticos por difusión en agar. Los resultados revelaron una resistencia total hacia la estreptomicina, seguida de altas resistencias para tetraciclina y florfenicol, y una menor resistencia a productos como fosfomicina y cloramfenicol.

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