Management of water usage and resources.

Question 1

In HICs, in what 3 ways can water usage be managed in agricultural processes?

Answer 1

1. Drip irrigation is the most efficient as it delivers water straight to the plant roots with minimal losses. It is however very expensive.
2. Rainfall sensors can be used so that crops are only watered when they need it.
3. Creating furrows in the fields to retain water and to prevent run-off.

Question 2

What 4 things have Walkers Crisps done to reduce its water usage?

Answer 2

1. Walkers Crisps has reduced its water usage by 50%. This has saved 700 million litres of water a year.
2. They installed 30 water meters at their production plants.
3. They are recycling water from the starch recovery programme for use in another part of the production process.
4. They re-educated their staff about the use of water in the sanitation facilities. Water usage is now monitored per shift. ‘Leak busters’ and ‘water champions’ are assigned to each shift.

Question 3

What 4 things have Cadbury’s done to reduce its water usage?

Answer 3

1. Cadbury’s is committed to saving water. They have reduced water usage at the site by about 15% per year, saving 17 million litres per year.
2. They reuse waste water.
3. The company has installed an on-site waste water treatment plan, at a cost of £2 million to clean water that has been through the production process.
4. This water can then be reused in a variety of different ways, for example, in the cooling towers.

Question 4

In HICs, in what 6 ways can water usage be managed in agricultural processes?

Answer 4

1. Shower instead of bath to save 60 litres.
2. Use a short flush toilet instead of a normal flush toilet to save 8 litres.
3. Use a waterbutt to water plants instead of a hosepipe to save 50 litres.
4. Use a water meter to control water usage.
5. Turn off taps to save 10 litres of water a minute.
6. Fix dripping taps to save 2,000 litres of water a month.

Question 5

In what 5 ways can water usage be managed in LICs?

Answer 5

1. Hand-dug wells.
2. Rainwater harvesting.
3. Gravity-fed schemes.
4. Tubewells and boreholes.
5. Recycling.

Question 6

In what 3 ways are hand-dug wells used to manage water usage in LICs?

Answer 6

1. The most common method of getting water in LICs.
2. Traditional ones often dry out as they are too shallow and may also become polluted as the sides are not lined and the top is uncovered.
3. New technology uses the traditional hand-dug methods with additional features.

Question 7

In what 3 ways is rainwater harvesting used to manage water usage in LICs?

Answer 7

1. Falling rainwater is some of the cleanest naturally occurring water available.
2. Rainwater harvesting is the collection of this water before it becomes contaminated or evaporates.
3. Water is generally collected from cleaned roofs, where it runs down a gutter into a storage tank.

Question 8

In what 4 ways are gravity-fed schemes used to manage water usage in LICs?

Answer 8

1. In hilly areas, water can be piped down to communities from higher water sources through gravity-fed schemes.
2. The spring or small unpolluted stream is dammed and protected at its source before being piped down to storage tanks in villages.
3. Distribution pipes then feed protected tapstands allowing people to draw water close to their homes.
4. This method avoids the potential mechanical problems of pumps, but still needs careful maintenance to keep the water clean.

Question 9

In what 7 ways are tubewells and boreholes used to manage water usage in LICs?

Answer 9

1. Tubewells are small diameter holes drilled by hand-power.
2. Although hand-dug wells retain more water, tubewells can be built quickly and cheaply, require less maintenance, can reach greater depths and are safer to construct.
3. Hand pumps can be used to draw water from tubewells.
4. Where there are harder rocks and the water table is very low, engine powered drills are necessary to cut through the earth to depths of 100m or more.
5. These are called boreholes and the water then has to be pumped to the surface using diesel or electric engines.
6. The water is then usually stored in large tanks before being piped to tapstands in surrounding villages.
7. The diesel or electric pumps needed are expensive to maintain.

Question 10

In what 6 ways is recycling used to manage water usage in LICs?

Answer 10

1. In India great emphasis is being put on recycling water rather than continually trying to find new sources for the rapidly growing population.
2. People from Bangalore will get to drink a mixture of recycled water and rainwater in future as plans have been announced to supply 600 million litres of recycled water for drinking purposes.
3. In Bangalore they are also treating sewage to make it drinkable. A proposal has been made to build a factory with the capacity to treat 425 million litres of sewage from Koramagala valley to make about 400 million litres of recycled water at Samethanahali and the recycled water from this plant would be pumped to the Hessarghatta reservoir.
4. In many Indian cities it has now become compulsory for new housing developments to use recycled water.
5. Kolkata has used the services of Unitech Water Technologies Ltd to recycle sewage water into drinking water.
6. The Mumbai Municipal Corporation intends to reduce water supply from 140 to 90 litres per person per day.

Question 11

Describe the dispute over the Tigris-Euphrates. (10)

Answer 11

1. The South-eastern Anatolia Project (GAP) will create 21 dams in Turkey. The Ataturk Dam is the key structure for the development of the Lower Euphrates River region. This will restrict flow to Syria and Iraq.
2. The main problem is that both the Tigris and the Euphrates have their source in Turkey and then flow through Syria and Iraq.
3. Turkey has created several dams that are restricting the flow of water into Syria and Iraq.
4. Since only some of the GAP irrigation project has been finished, disputes between Turkey and Iraq are likely to increase as less water will flow into Iraq.
5. Turkey argues that GAP is beneficial to Syria and Iraq, as the flow of the rivers is now more constant. However this has not happened. After GAP the waters of the Euphrates will decrease from 30 BCM/a a year at the Syrian border to 16 BCM/a and at the Iraqi border from 16 BCM/a to 5 BCM/a.
6. In Syria the Tabaqah Dam forms a reservoir, Lake Assad, that is used for irrigating cotton. Syria has dammed its two tributaries and is in the process of constructing another dam. The scarcity of water in the Middle East leaves Iraq in constant fear that Syria and Turkey will use up most of the water before it reaches Iraq.
7. Conflict in this areas has been ongoing since the 1940s.
8. In 1974 Iraq put troops on the Syrian border and threatened to destroy Syria’s Al-Thawra Dam on the Euphrates.
9. Talks are continuing but there was great tension at the conference on international law over shared water resources in the Arab region, held at Sharm-el-Sheik in May 2000.
10. In March 2009 Turkey promised to double the amount of water to flow downstream to Iraq. This did no happen. Iraq relies on the water from the river for 90% of its irrigation needs. The Iraqi government has not allowed rice farmers in the southern parts of the country to plant their crops. In the city of Najaf, farmers demonstrated and demanded that the government force Turkey to release more water. The amount of water in the Euphrates flowing out of Turkey is a quarter of what it was in 2000. Conflicts between Iraq and Turkey are certain to increase in the future.

Question 12

For what 3 reasons was the Three Gorges built?

Answer 12

1. To produce electricity for rapidly growing industrial areas. The total electric generating capacity of the dam will reach 22,500 megawatts.
2. To control flooding along the Yangtze floodplain, which will stop huge areas of farmland from being destroyed.
3. To improve shipping. The mew navigable waterways along the Yangtze will provide mass transit of raw materials to the area allowing massive economic growth. They have allowed container shipping to reach all the way up the Yangtze River from Shanghai to Chongqing, the biggest city of south-west China. The river transport will be improved from 10 million to 50 million tonnes per year and the costs reduced by 35%. Navigation will become much easier in the drier season when water levels used to be low.

Question 13

What are the 2 positive effects on the environment of the Three Gorges?

Answer 13

1. It will have a flood control capacity of 22.15 BCM/a , which will be sufficient to control the greatest flood experienced in the past 100 years.
2. It will protect 1,500,000 hectares of farmland.

Question 14

What are the 5 negative effects on the environment of the Three Gorges?

Answer 14

1. The Yangtze river dolphin has become extinct.
2. Large wetland area that attracted the Siberian Crane has been destroyed.
3. Numbers of the Yangtze sturgeon have gone down.
4. The water quality of the Yangtze’s tributaries is deteriorating rapidly, as the dammed river is less able to disperse pollutants effectively.
5. Landslides re commonplace, the reservoir has already collapsed in 91 places and a total of 36 km have caved in.

Question 15

What are the 4 positive effects on the people of the Three Gorges?

Answer 15

1. New industry will bring jobs for the local people.
2. Tourism has brought jobs to the locals. Ex-farmers are now being used in the tourist industry. For example, the Tujia, a local ethnic minority, now cater for tourists by dragging small boats by rope along the Shennong stream, to allow the tourists to access the beautiful scenery.
3. More than 800,000 tourists visited the Three Gorges Dam in 2007, with tourism revenue of £10 million.
4. It will protect the lives and property of 15 million people from flooding.

Question 16

What are the 4 negative effects on the people of the Three Gorges?

Answer 16

1. 1.4 million people have had to move because their villages and towns have been lost beneath the rising waters.
2. Gaoyang was the last town to be evacuated in July 2008.
3. In July 2007 a hillside collapsed, dragging 13 farmers to their deaths and drowning 11 fishermen.
4. A big mudslide hit a village in the Gaoyang area in April 2008, sweeping into the local school’s playground and part of the village. In July 2008, a landslide in Badong County in Hubei Province, beside the reservoir, killed more than 30 people after burying a bus.