UNESCO Water Portal | Water Links Worldwide

I just found a great site by UNESCO–
http://www.unesco.org/water/water_links/
This is the most comprehensive listing of water-related websites that I have seen to date.

On another note: I will try to update this blog at least two times a week, every Tuesday and Thursday.

Water Resources and water-related links

Finally another hydroblog: Water Resources (note: unfortunately it’s also a great example of how automated commenting programs can post unsolicited links to commercial sites, so don’t bother reading comments).

I’ll try to find more. Also… water is huge, of course, and as a result water’s presence on the net is big and getting bigger. Is there some meta-water website out there, i.e. one keeping track of all the water-related websites of interest? Since such a site would presumably be a monumental task, I assume not. But I will try to find one and if it is not there then I will at least try to post all the links that I have in some permanent, publicly accessible place, even if it means I shell out a few buckaroos a year.

riversymposium & general update

The riversymposium is coming up in September in Brisbane, Australia. This year’s program looks quite exciting, with the theme: Managing rivers with climate change and expanding populations, check it out: http://www.riversymposium.com/

The case studies are quite interesting too (the following text is from the riversymposium website):

• Vistula River (Poland): The Vistula is one of Europe’s great rivers and its basin covers more than half of Poland. It is one of the last major relatively unregulated rivers in Europe and debate rages over construction of the Nieszawa Dam. The Vistula River was once rich in migratory fish but by the 1980s the last salmon disappeared, due to contaminated water, river regulation and intensive fishing. Since the 1990s local authorities have been carrying out restitution of salmon.
• Congo (central Africa): The Congo River in Africa is the fifth longest river in the world with the second largest flow and watershed. It is up to 16 km wide in places, contains over 4000 islands, and is a major navigation route for the trade of central Africa. A proposal for a new hydroelectric plant would see production of electricity double that of China’s Three Gorges Dam.
• Amazon (South America): The Amazon River has the largest volume of any river in the world and carries 20% of all the freshwater discharged into the oceans. It is over 325km wide at its estuary and drains the entire Northern half of the South American, including all the torrential tropical rains that deluge the rainforests.
• Chao Phraya River (Thailand): Thailand’s Chao Phraya River Basin covers 30% of the country’s total area and is home to 23 million people, including eight million in Bangkok. The basin is in transition from water richness to water scarcity due to increasing water demands. There are 3000 dams in the basin which are used for storing monsoon flows, irrigation and electricity generation. The increasing population in the basin has contributed to polluted water and degraded land in some parts of the basin.

Related to the riversymposium, I have decided I will try to be the Young Water Scientist of the Year for the 2007 riversymposium.