In this study a simple, environment friendly and cost-effective method has been developed to synthesize metallic nanoparticles (NPs) from natural waste residues such as onion, potato, tea moringa, and discuss the effect of extract residues on efficiency, yield, size, shape and morphology of the magnetite nanoparticle. The synthesized nanoparticle was characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared spectrometer (FT-IR), X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray fluorescence (XRF), and energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDX). The promising applications of nanotechnology are their efficiency in wastewater treatment including removal of chemical and physical parameter. The study proposes that magnetite NPs can be synthesized using onion, potato, tea and moringa residues extract as reducing agent. The results of XRD pattern confirmed the synthesized magnetite NPs using onion, potato, tea and moringa as crystalline phase of α-Fe2O3. EDX spectroscopy showed the presence of elemental iron and oxygen, indicating that the nanoparticles are essentially present in oxide form. UV absorption in the range of 190–340 nm confirmed the formation of Fe/NP, and Fourier Transform Infrared spectrometer (FTIR) indicated formation of iron oxide crystalline NPs in which reducing and capping agent such as flavones, the intensity of absorption peak in FT-IR spectrum depends on type of extract. The synthesized Fe/NPs were tested for treatment of wastewater under different conditions such as contact time (0 - 60) min, and dose (0.1- 0.5)g, the results indicate that’s magnetite NPs of moringa and onion are more effective in degradation and adsorption processes at optimum dose (0.4g, and time 45 min).
Keywords: green method, iron oxide nanoparticle, extract natural materials, scanning electron microscopic, Energy dispersive spectroscopy

Hydrodiplomacy is the emerged framework where legal acts, primarily based on technical data and information, aim at supporting commonly accepted solutions to water disagreements, tensions, disputes and conflicts among states with transboundary waters. Climate change and other socioeconomic pressures, e.g. human overpopulation, nevertheless, are bound to destabilize the core element of hydrodiplomacy, i.e. the water. In the research hydrodiplomacy components laid on a) policy aspects, such as cooperation agreements and common legal frameworks on water management, b) preventive aspects, such as socio-political tensions, mankind pressures on the hydrosystem and historical disputes among the riparians, c) cooperative aspects, such as joint development and research programmes and projects and d) technical aspects, such as quality and quantity status of the transboundary waters, are considered together with climate change features, expressed as e) climate change-related studies on the transboundary waters and as f) climate change-related ratified agreements and protocols, to assess the impact of climate change on the water-related transboundary cooperation. The case study area is composed of the five transboundary river basins of Greece shared with neighboring states. The coupling of all these different-nature elements is conducted with the use of the Analytical Hierarchical Process multicriteria method, and results on the development of a normalized index that quantifies transboundary cooperation on water management in the climate crisis era.

Many hydrological responses rely on the water content of the soil (WCS). As soil moisture rises, more runoff is created, resulting in increased sediment movement. This environmental element affects the soil's erosion resistance. Runoff, sediment, and erosion are crucial in hydraulic structure design and watershed studies. The variations in the WSC affect the agriculture section, and the sustainable management of agricultural water and land resources will depend on this factor. Many environmental parameters like soil and surface temperature, the amount of precipitation, and groundwater level influence this parameter. Hydrological extremes and climate variations intensely impact these parameters, which increases the importance of studying WCS under changing climate conditions. The constraints of measuring and expenditure limitation cause this parameter not to be accessible in high spatio-temporal resolutions everywhere, particularly in vast areas like Quebec, Canada. Therefore, a strategy should be researched to collect and model this useful parameter in data-scarce locations. This research will use SMAP products to model and forecast the SWC. Accordingly, Google Earth Engine cloud datasets will be used. Using this platform provides the possibility of obtaining curated datasets worldwide. The regression support vector machine (SVM) and extreme learning machine (ELM) models optimized by the teacher-learning algorithm will be used to model and forecast the datasets. These two methods are the most conventional artificial intelligence methods in non-linear phenomena modeling. The inherent intense seasonality and stochastic patterns in the WCS make these modeling techniques suitable for forecasting and extracting patterns in the datasets. The former model can generate explicit equations that can be handy for applying to other datasets and conditions, while the latter is considerably fast among other AI methods and can generate real-time results. In the end, the accuracy of outcomes and model efficiency will be evaluated concurrently.

Hydrogels for seawater desalination processes are developing rapidly through the innovation and improvement of polymers, chemical synthesis, formulation, and chemical engineering concerning the desalination process. This is also evident from the increase in the number of patent applications filed each year in this area of research and development. Therefore, this work, in the form of a patent landscape report, encapsulates the state of the art by introducing what has been patented concerning hydrogels for seawater desalination processes. As a result, 78 patent documents were found, and 60% of all patent documents have been published during the last three years. According to the findings, China was ranked as the first jurisdiction, and the most prolific patenting company is from the United States, while William Marsh Rice University (United States) and Tianjin Polytechnic University (China) are the academic institutions leading the way. The patent classifications reveal that most inventions are intended for the treatment of seawater (e.g., desalination), processes specially adapted for manufacturing semi-permeable membranes for separation processes, and the treatment of water using ion-exchange sorbent compositions, dialysis, osmosis, or reverse osmosis. The knowledge clusters and expert driving factors in this patent landscape report indicate that the research and development are based on macromolecular gels and synthetic macromolecular compounds, as well as devices and apparatus for desalination that are concentrated in most patents.

Accelerated climate crisis exacerbates existing water and soil management challenges in Mediterranean region which are usually attributed to the combination of both irrational irrigation and unsustainable farming practices. Current conditions and future projections indicate that water-related risks are expected to be intensified during the coming decades. Alongside, farmers often present not high environmental awareness; adopting non-sustainable farming practices such as an extensive use of herbicides instead of mowing/mulching for the weeds; this way affecting soil hydraulic characteristics and fertility. To investigate the effects of different weed management practices on soil organic matter content and therefore, soil water holding capacity and infiltrability, an extensive soil sampling campaign was performed in the semi-arid Mediterranean agricultural pilot basin of Agia – Greece. The pilot is located in Pinios river basin that constitutes the most highly productive agricultural plain of the country. The Agia basin was selected since it presents uneven spatiotemporal distribution of groundwater resources and wide application of herbicides, while an urgent need exists to sustain and improve apples production. Moreover, the Agia basin constitutes a highly instrumented area where the Pinios Hydrologic Observatory belonging to International Long Term Ecological Research network has been developed, and thus additional field measurements could contribute to the overall data collection framework. Soil sampling was conducted in apple orchards in April 2022; just before the beginning of the growing season. Ninety-six soil samples in total were collected from 8 different fields; half of them applying systematic herbicides treatment, and others mulching. For the upper soil profile (0-10 cm depth), the results indicate that soil organic matter in the fields applying mowing was found to be higher by more than 20% compared to the fields applying herbicides. The corresponding difference for soil depth of 10-30 cm was 7%, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of mulching in increasing soil organic matter. The results of the current study could be upscaled at a larger scale in the context of adapting agricultural water-stressed regions to climate change, whilst contributing significantly to the production cost and the preservation of the ecosystemic values of the regional nexus.

This study presents the results of a survey regarding irrigation practice (legislative framework, administration organization, delivery and distribution systems, applied techniques, application of new technologies on water irrigation management etc.) for the Region of Western Greece in Greece and the Region of Apulia in Italy. On site interviews (about 500 per region) were performed using special questionnaires that regarded water resources, irrigation systems design, installation and management. The interviews concerned a variety of agricultural and urban landscape irrigation systems, at end-user level. Good practices and problems regarding design, construction, maintenance and management were reported. Also, the low usage of sensors and other information technology tools for water management was registered. The supervisors of the systems welcomed this initiative and its results. The development of a practical surveying / auditing guide, approved by the relevant stakeholders, could be a very useful tool for continuous improvement of irrigation systems efficiency.

The presence of the major environmental pollutants in water exhibits a variety of harmful effects on living organisms in polluted ecosystems. Very often, apart from ubiquitous arsenic (As), organic compounds, iron, manganese, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and similar pollutants may reach dramatically high levels in originally unpolluted waters caused by anthropogenic activities. Accordingly, a variety of treatment processes are used to remove the pollutants from waters. However, the cost of the treatment plays an important role in final choice of the process to be applied.

In an effort to overcome limitations, the aim of this research was a new approach to the development and production of water pollutants removal media. As a result, a cheap and effective sorbent based on natural minerals has been synthesized for the treatment of contaminated waters. The process includes chemical and subsequent thermal treatment of quartz sand with a magnesium carbonate water solution. The modified quartz sand was characterized and the material’s effectiveness in As, Fe and Mn removal from synthetic waters was tested. The MgO-coated sand in 5 min. interaction in column operation with 250 ml of synthetic water, with 200 µgL^-1 of As(III), 0.51 mgL^-1 of Fe(III) and 1.41 mgL^-1 of Mn(II), removed 90% of the As(III). The final concentrations of arsenic, iron and manganese in treated waters after ten minutes of contact with active materials were very close to zero. The MgO-coated sand exhibited a strong ability to remove both ionic and colloidal forms of pollutants from treated waters. The removal process is based on redox and sorption processes on the surface and inside the pores of active material.

Because of the challenges facing today’s society such as the pollution of freshwater systems from intensive agricultural activities, and the interest in how agriculture will be able to cover the ever-increasing nutritional needs of overpopulation with sustainable systems, it is worth paying attention and interest in the management of agricultural watersheds. Agronomic simulation try to provide answers and solutions to these challenges. In this work, the Agricultural Policy Environmental eXtender (APEX) agroecological model is applied to the Karla aquifer in central Greece. The Karla aquifer is currently under intense environmental pressures due to agricultural activity. The APEX model used in combination with the GIS-based interface ArcAPEX combines geomorphology, land use, and soil spatial datasets with the APEX database that contains parameters and settings required to simulate plant growth, runoff, fertilizers applications, tillage operations, irrigation, and their effects at watershed scale. APEX was calibrated (data from 1980 to 2012) and validated (data from 2012 to 2016) for runoff, crop yield, nitrate leaching with satisfactory results. After the calibration and validation process, the APEX model was used to test the impact of different climate scenarios based on mild Regional Climate Pathway (RCP 4.5) on nutrient losses and water quality .

The hesitant intuitionistic fuzzy optimization approach optimizes multi-objective optimization problems under uncertainty and hesitation; and reflects the practical aspects of better decision-making. In the present study, a new optimization approach, Hesitant intuitionistic fuzzy optimization (HIFO), has been proposed for optimal cropping pattern in the Kakrapar Right Bank Main Canal command area of Ukai Kakrapar Water Resources Project in India. The HIFO multi-objective fuzzy linear programming (HIFO MOFLP) solution includes three objectives, namely, maximization of net irrigation benefits (NB), maximization of employment generation (EG) and minimization of cost of cultivation (CC), with appropriate sets of constraints. The performance of the aforesaid model is assessed in terms of irrigation intensity, degree of acceptance (α), degree of rejection (β) for inflows corresponding to 75% probability of exceedance. The irrigation intensity from the proposed HIFO MOFLP model has been found to be 85.84 %, while NIB, EG and CC from the proposed model are 5559.32 million Rs, 14824.01-thousand-man days and 3454.37 million Rs, respectively with α = 0.65 and β = 0.22. The proposed HIFO MOFLP model has been compared with IFO MOFLP approach given by Pawar et al. (2020) for the same command area and found to give improved results in terms of the irrigation intensity of command area and objective function values. The current study demonstrates that, how hesitant fuzzy membership function and non-membership function can be applied to deal with uncertainty and hesitation for a real-world problem.

ABSTRACT

One of the technological developments in supporting irrigation modernization is the installation of telemetry monitoring system which is built based on three main elements of sensors, internet connection, and data center. Dadahup Swamp Irrigation Area is one of the development areas that has been supported by the installation of telemetry monitoring system at three points on the upstream, middle and downstream irrigation area sides. The water management system of Dadahup Swamp Irrigation Area has not been running optimally in regulating the water level which results in irrigated land not getting good water quality for rice plant growth. The research objective is to describe the condition of the water quantity and quality profile based on telemetry monitoring system. The research method was carried out by observing water level elevation, rainfall, pH, and salinity in the rainy and dry seasons in the upstream, middle, and downstream. The results showed that the dynamics of water quantity greatly affect water quality in both the rainy and dry seasons.