The objective of this project is to optimize the results of using treated water under the conditions of climate, soils, crops and proprietary techniques in the region of Murcia. Some trials in agricultural areas are projected: Campo de Cartagena, Campo de Lorca, Campos del Río, Alguazas, where there are treatment plants which effluents are directly or indirectly used for irrigation. Some representative crops will be selected and monitored, developing farming techniques that optimize the use of these effluents without causing injury or damage to crops or soils.

The present project aims to evaluate various advanced wastewater treatment with a view to reuse. It is proposed initially to evaluate four different technologies which use: sodium hypochlorite, sodium hypochlorite and residence in stabilization pond, disinfection by ultraviolet radiation and various membrane techniques (microfiltration, ultrafiltration, etc.).

After that it will be carried out a study on the effectiveness of each of these techniques to different degrees of treatment and different periods of the year, with the ultimate goal of finding the best correlation between technology and best operating conditions.

Finally, it is wanted to identify the most appropriate uses of treated water with each of the technologies listed above (recreational, ornamental, agricultural, groundwater recharge, etc.), after the analysis of microbiological and physical-chemical properties. Moreover, it is proposed to undertake a specific classification for agricultural use of reclaimed water, taking into account the different types of crops and irrigation systems applicable.

This project aims to deepen the understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate the absorption of water, in hydroponically grown plants with brackish water from overexploited aquifers, in order to propose the basis for optimization of water use of these crops. It will be examined the salinity tolerance of pepper plants at the stage of vegetative development, as well as their response to increasing concentrations of soluble salts to nutritional and physiological levels. It will be addressed the characterization and regulation of water flows, and aquaporins in the plasma membrane and its role in plant water regulation and adaptation to salt stress.

In 1993, the Project Memory of the National Hydrological Plan (White Paper on Water, 1998) accounted for 89 hydrogeological units with problems of overexploitation in the whole Spanish territory, while the White Paper on Groundwater notes that there is a deficit of over 700 hm3. An overview of the distribution of overexploited aquifers shows that most of them are in SE Spain, in the provinces of Alicante, Almeria and Murcia.

Taking just one example of the three aforementioned provinces, we will say that according to the Water Map (DPA, 1991) the province of Alicante has about 785 hm3/year of average water resources, which can be distributed as follows: 413 hm3 correspond to surface waters, groundwater is 340 hm3 and about 30 hm3 correspond to treated wastewater. Moreover, demand is estimated in 850 hm3/year divided into: 670 hm3 used for irrigation and 145 hm3 for urban supply. Urban water supply includes water for industry (it is usually supplied by the same urban water distribution network, making it virtually impossible to separate both uses). Furthermore, given the large number of tourists coming to the province of Alicante during the summer, the urban endowment must be increased in 35 hm3/year to meet this additional demand. If we compare resources and demands, it can be deduced that the water balance of the province of Alicante is negative, around 65 hm3/year.

Although water balance is negative and there are not enough resources to meet the demands, it is completely covered. So population is supplied, fields are irrigated and tourism has water throughout the year. Where does this extra water come from? The lack of resources is covered with the extraction of groundwater reserves, ie, using water that was stored for thousands of years. This exploitation, superior to renewable resources, is known as overexploitation and is located primarily in the region of Costa Blanca (considering the province of Alicante).

The existence of aquifer over-exploitation in the province of Alicante responds to several factors. On the one hand, the fair weather makes this area especially favorable for intensive crops (tomatoes, grapes, fruits...); effectively, cultivated lands in the south of the province greatly increased from the 60's, requiring large volumes of water for irrigation, which could not be covered with surface water (due to the lack of permanent rivers), so their supply was resolved with groundwater resources. On the other hand, the provincial aquifers, and more specifically those in the southern area, have a small extent. This, together with the scarce rainfall in this region with average values below 400 mm/year, causes that a slight recharge which is unable to balance the withdrawals made over the last decades.

Overexploitation leads to a series of negative or undesirable consequences, which are grouped into: hydrological, loss of quality, environmental, morphological and geotechnical, economic and legal. Depending on the type, location and characteristics of each aquifer the observed consequences have resulted different.

Overexploited aquifers need an immediate solution to the progressive emptying of its reserves because of the obvious risk of depletion and economic ruin that would be generated in large parts of our country. This situation is particularly serious in the Region of Murcia where the overexploitation of aquifers gets up to 300 hm3/year, representing almost 50% of the total overexploitation in Spain.

Not resolving this issue in the coming years would be a disaster for large parts of our country and especially for the Region of Murcia where they could go bankrupt between 60,000 and 100,000 hectares of irrigation. Although it may seem alarmist, this could be a reality unless we take urgent actions. The solutions, as indicated by the National Hydrological Plan (PHN) must come from outside the affected areas, since the deficit is structural, ie it can not be solved with resources from the Segura basin, which is at the limit of use of water resources.

Any solution to over-exploited aquifers even those which have management plans requires an automated control of all parameters that highlight the state of the aquifers in real time. This is the automated control that should have these aquifers, in order to allow the knowledge of water levels in the various monitoring wells, flows of natural emergencies, recharge rates and a few parameters which are necessary for the knowledge of the amount and quality of groundwater of over-exploited aquifers.

The project aims to reach this automated control in two phases. A first phase, which is the object of this project, would be to refine the current understanding of an aquifer and to design the best network of automated control for sustainable management. All that would be applied to an actual case, like the aquifer of Caravaca. In this phase, and prior to the design suggested, it would be necessary to carry out a previous study of all the instrumentation existing on the market and to make a comparative analysis in order to be able to define the most suitable equipment for the casuistry presented by the overexploited aquifers.

A second phase, which is the objective of this project, would be the acquisition, installation and monitoring of the network established over a year, in order to pass this automatic system to the administrative authorities, Confederation of the Segura Basin, and especially to users who would have some essential tools for managing their aquifer.

This project involves the study of the most important parameters of the coastal agriculture of the southeast of Spain from the viewpoint of water economy. While this productive sector is, within a Spanish agricultural landscape, a prime example of productivity and efficiency in the use of water resources, there are few research papers that would support this affirmation. This project aims to fill this gap by developing a study of economic efficiency in water use that will allow us to derive demand curves for this input and to characterize the productivity and other indicators of profitability. These results are paid more relevant if we consider the relative economic importance that the coastal productions (mainly horticultural) have on the regional economy, but also how water resources in many cases act as a real element of growth potential choke of this activity.

The proposed work plan will, first, collecting field information on technical, agronomic, economic an management aspects of this agricultural model. The mere generation of this source of information is an important milestone in the project, given the lack of it, as well as allowing by means of simple techniques to evaluate the profitability and productivity of water.

Then it will be built, using a combined methodology, mathematical simulation models that will allow to derive water demand functions with which to study the responses of this sector to different tariff and water supply systems.

Using the technique of Data Enveloping Analysis will allow to measure rigorously the efficiency in water use in the studied sector, both from an allocative and a technical and economical perspective, allowing to lead through a second analysis stage profiles of efficiency at the farms, identifying the possible lines of improvement in the average efficiency of the area.

All these results will finally allow to propose action strategies (both public and private) to help improve the use and management of water resources in coastal agriculture in southeastern Spain.

The main objective of the project is the identification and analysis of efficiency, and technical and economic productivity of water in irrigated agricultural systems of the Segura basin, paradigmatic case, due to the semiarid character and its structural deficit, amongst the basins in the Iberian peninsula. It will be made following a methodological path which will generate a series of primary and intermediate results, necessary for this analysis but also with substantive value itself. Foremost among them: determining the irrigated areas in different areas and sub-regional sub-areas; the typological characterization of agro-systems determining and analyzing their agro-economic balances and respective production functions and the determination of water demand (water needs) and consumption, essential basis for achieving the main objective of the project. From them, it will be identified and analyzed the efficiency and productivity of water in different agro-ecosystems and spatial areas, using a complex and combined methodology to establish these variables in all dimensions, resulting in a model system of indicators. Finally, as a necessary culmination, the analysis of water demand in relation to its price and level of efficiency in order to determine, first, a parametric system of prices relative of each factor and, secondly, the dynamic flows of resource allocation, trends in the distribution and accessibility in relation to price and productivity.

The purpose of this project is to study the influence of vegetation cover recovery and of the construction of sediment retention dams on hydrology, geomorphology and sediment retention in three watersheds representative of semi-arid Mediterranean environments in the Southeast of Spain.

It will be made an inventory and study of the characteristics, status and degree of clogging of dams which were built in restoration projects. In representative sections of the drainage network, it will be analyzed the morphological adjustments, upstream and downstream of the dam, caused by the correction works. The chronology of sediments retained (related to meteorological events) and their origin will be estimated using isotopic tracer techniques.

This work proposes to properly diagnose the processes of salinization with emphasis on agricultural lands, their origin, the influence of natural and human factors, and their influence on the quality of surface water and groundwater.

The knowledge of the mineralogy of soils affected by this kind of degradation will be used to establish cause-effect relationships and to determine possible recovery strategies and management and to develop codes of good practices.

It is included a review of identification of heavy metals, their assimilability and the risk of passing through the food chain and the identification of potential pollutant sources.

The studies of pollutant dispersion fluxes and of affections to water resources, along with maps of space-time evolution are other expected results of this work.

The main objective of this project is to optimize the degradation process of xenobiotics (pesticides and metals in high oxidation state) in wastewater, mainly produced from agriculture and industry, given their potential pollution load, with te aim to get final residual levels below those required by law for subsequent discharge into channels and re-use for domestic and agricultural use. In order to achieve this, it is projected to use different types of catalysts such as TiO2, FeCl 3, ZnO, and WO3 MoS2, and oxidants such as H2O2 and Na2S2O8. Two types of photocatalysis will be used; one in heterogeneous phase by using semiconductor materials, and another in a homogeneous (photo-Fenton) phase, in which the catalyst is Fe2+ cation. Both processes would be carried out in a pilot plant at laboratory scale using solar radiation received in the Region of Murcia (over 3,300 hours of sunshine per year, radiation intensity higher than 120,000 lux at the most luminous hours in the summer, and average global radiation above 200 W/m3•h). In case the final concentrations were above the allowed limits for drinking water, reuse water would be directed to irrigation, so that there would be carried out the necessary experiences in order to know whether the observed levels could affect the growth and yield of crops such as tomatoes or peppers, which are sensitive to these factors, while highly relevant to the regional agricultural sector from an economic point of view. If the results are as expected, they will be easily transferable to companies in the sector, which are increasingly concerned about the need to implement sustainable systems, characterized by being technically appropriate, economically viable and socially acceptable, especially in SE Spain where water scarcity makes water resources very precious.