Person:
De Stefano, Lucia

First Name

Lucia

Last Name

De Stefano

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/75200

Affiliation

Universidad Complutense de Madrid

Faculty / Institute

Ciencias Geológicas

Department

Geodinámica, Estratigrafía y Paleontología

Area

Geodinámica Externa

Identifiers

Full item page

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 10 of 29

An overview of groundwater resources in Spain
(Water, Agriculture and the Environment in Spain: can we square the circle?, 2012) De Stefano, Lucia; Martínez-Cortina, Luis; Chico, Daniel
In Spain, as in most arid and semiarid countries, during the last half century the silent revolution of intensive groundwater use has provided important socio-economic benefits. Nonetheless, traditionally water management has focused on surface water and has paid little attention to groundwater. The European Water Framework Directive (WFD) planning process has resulted in significant advancements in the knowledge of groundwater resources and their use in Spain. However, data on groundwater resources are still partially incomplete and an official countrywide overview of groundwater resources (and their uses) is still not available. At present the estimated groundwater demand is about 7,000 million m3/year, mainly for irrigation purposes. Intensive groundwater use has contributed to the degradation of this strategic resource, which is expected to be partially remediated by the WFD implementation. Previous studies in Andalusia found that in irrigated agriculture groundwater use was economically more productive than surface water. This was attributed to a series of factors, chiefly groundwater resilience to long dry spells, and it was suggested that this could apply also to other regions in Spain. The data presented in this chapter seem to question this former idea, since no clear correlation could be found between the source of water and its apparent water productivity in irrigated agriculture. This is an issue that merits further study, including combining local and country-wide data to refine the calculations.
Managing the Cascading Risks of Droughts: Institutional Adaptation in Transboundary River Basins
(Earth's Future, 2018) Garrick, Dustin E.; Schlager, Edella; De Stefano, Lucia; Villamayor-Tomas, Sergio
Transboundary river basins experience complex coordination challenges during droughts. The multiscale nature of drought creates potential for spillovers when upstream adaptation decisions have cascading impacts on downstream regions. This paper advances the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework to examine drought adaptation decision‐making in a multijurisdictional context. We integrate concepts of risk management into the IAD framework to characterize drought across its natural and human dimensions. A global analysis identifies regions where severe droughts combine with institutional fragmentation to require coordinated adaptation. We apply the risk‐based IAD framework to examine drought adaptation in the Rio Bravo/Grande—an archetypical transboundary river shared by the United States and Mexico and by multiple states within each country. The analysis draws on primary data and a questionnaire with 50 water managers in four distinct, yet interlinked, “institutional catchments,” which vary in terms of their drought characteristics, socioeconomic attributes, and governance arrangements. The results highlight the heterogeneity of droughts and uneven distribution of their impacts due to the interplay of drought hazards and institutional fragmentation. Transboundary water sharing agreements influence the types and sequence of interactions between upstream and downstream jurisdictions, which we describe as spillovers that involve both conflict and cooperation. Interdependent jurisdictions often draw on informal decision‐making venues (e.g., data sharing, operational decisions) due to the higher transaction costs and uncertainty associated with courts and planning processes, yet existing coordination and conflict resolution venues have proven insufficient for severe, sustained droughts. Observatories will be needed to measure and manage the cascading risks of drought.
Multi-level interactions in a context of political decentralization and evolving water-policy goals: the case of Spain
(Regional Environmental Change, 2018) De Stefano, Lucia; Hernandez-Mora, Nuria
Spain is a highly decentralized country where water governance is a multi-level institutional endeavor requiring effective intergovernmental coordination—in terms of objectives and actions. The paper revisits the evolution of vertical and horizontal intergovernmental interactions in Spain, with a special focus on four interregional river basins. We build on a historical analysis of the evolution of water governance institutions, a mapping of existing interactions over water, careful document analysis, and interviews with selected public officials that are at the interface between the political and the technical spheres. Intergovernmental interaction occurs through different mechanisms that are slowly evolving to adapt to new challenges posed by changing power dynamics and water policy goals. Since the start of political decentralization in 1978, key institutional reforms within and outside of the water sector have opened windows of opportunity for regions to seek new spheres of influence and power. Disputes over water allocation, environmental flows, inter-basin transfers, and even basin boundaries delineation emerge as an expression of a struggle over power distribution between the regions and the central government. The physical and institutional geography of water and diverging visions and priorities (over water and beyond) are among the factors that contribute to shape conflict and cooperation in intergovernmental relations over water.
Water planning and management after the EU Water Framework Directive
(Water, agriculture and the environment in Spain : can we square the circle?, 2012) De Stefano, Lucia; Hernandez-Mora, Nuria; De Stefano, Lucia; Llamas, Ramón
This chapter provides an overview of the different legal, administrative and economic factors that provide the institutional context for water management in Spain, focusing on the effects of the 2000 European Water Framework Directive (WFD). At present and partially due to the WFD implementation process, the Spanish water sector is experiencing a slow transition from old to new water paradigms. Highlights in this sense are the consideration of the achievement of ecological quality as a primary planning and management objective; an increase in public participation and transparency in water-related decision processes; the economic analysis of water services; and an increased emphasis on water demand management. The achievement of the WFD objectives faces several challenges and uncertainties that are of technical, financial and political nature. However, possibly the key to a successful implementation of the WFD and a real shift of paradigm lays in strengthening the link between land use and water management and in creating institutional structures that facilitate co-responsibility and full cooperation between the central state and the regions, who hold most of the responsibilities on land use management.
Perception of Drought and Local Responses by Farmers: A Perspective from the Jucar River Basin, Spain
(Water Resources Management, 2016) Urquijo, Julia; De Stefano, Lucia
Farmers play a key role in water management at all levels and their role becomes even more relevant during droughts, when water systems are under increased pressure. This paper presents a study based on interviews to farmers in eastern Spain using different types of water sources, to explore how that factor influences perceptions and actions during droughts. Results show that farmers often perceive droughts through non-climatic factors, e.g. the volume of water stored in the reservoirs or water restrictions, rather than through meteorological parameters. The type of water source highly influences farmers' perception of drought and the type of strategies implemented to face it, confirming the key role of groundwater in buffering brought. In areas using surface water, practices to mitigate impacts include temporary changes in cropping practices, temporary modification of water distribution shifts or the use of emergency wells. In areas irrigated with different water sources – groundwater, reclaimed water – farmers' actions address mainly permanent water scarcity problems and their concerns are focused on the long term viability of their activity – in terms of cost of water or water quality – rather than on variability of rainfall. Both in surface and groundwater-based irrigation areas, local responses often require close cooperation among users, as they may involve redistributing the available resources, sharing extra costs, or combining water from different sources to achieve the desired water quality.
Project number: 219
Los juegos del agua: el desafío de la gestión de las aguas subterráneas
(2019) De Stefano, Lucia; Urquijo Reguera, Julia; Montero González, Esperanza; Bolinches Quero, Antonio; Villarroya Gil, Fermín Ignacio
El juego tiene una duración aproximada de 2,5 horas y ayuda a despertar el interés del alumnado sobre los retos del uso y gestión de las aguas subterráneas, haciéndoles por tanto receptivos a los contenidos teóricos relacionados que se explican en las clases siguientes (medidas de gestión del agua, normativa, etc.).
Impacts of European drought events: insights from an international database of text-based reports
(Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 2016) Stah, Kerstin; Kohn, Irene; Blauhut, Veit; Urquijo, Julia; De Stefano, Lucia; Acácio, Vanda; Dias, Susana; Stagge, James H.; Tallaksen, Lena M.; Kampragou, Eleni; Van Loon, Anne F.; Barker, Lieke A. Melsen6, Lucy J.; Melsen, Lieke A.; Bifulco, Carlo; Musolino, Dario; Carli, Carli; Massarutto, Antonio; Assimacopoulos, Dionysis; Van Lanen, Henny A. J.
Drought is a natural hazard that can cause a wide range of impacts affecting the environment, society, and the economy. Providing an impact assessment and reducing vulnerability to these impacts for regions beyond the local scale, spanning political and sectoral boundaries, requires systematic and detailed data regarding impacts. This study presents an assessment of the diversity of drought impacts across Europe based on the European Drought Impact report Inventory (EDII), a unique research database that has collected close to 5000 impact reports from 33 European countries. The reported drought impacts were classified into major impact categories, each of which had a number of subtypes. The distribution of these categories and types was then analyzed over time, by country, across Europe and for particular drought events. The results show that impacts on agriculture and public water supply dominate the collection of drought impact reports for most countries and for all major drought events since the 1970s, while the number and relative fractions of reported impacts in other sectors can vary regionally and from event to event. The analysis also shows that reported impacts have increased over time as more media and website information has become available and environmental awareness has increased. Even though the distribution of impact categories is relatively consistent across Europe, the details of the reports show some differences. They confirm severe impacts in southern regions (particularly on agriculture and public water supply) and sector-specific impacts in central and northern regions (e.g., on forestry or energy production). The protocol developed thus enabled a new and more comprehensive view on drought impacts across Europe. Related studies have already developed statistical techniques to evaluate the link between drought indices and the categorized impacts using EDII data. The EDII is a living database and is a promising source for further research on drought impacts, vulnerabilities, and risks across Europe. A key result is the extensive variety of impacts found across Europe and its documentation. This insight can therefore inform drought policy planning at national to international levels.
Public Participation and Water Management in the European Union: Experiences and Lessons Learned
(The Columbia River Treaty Revisited : Transboundary River Governance in the Face of Uncertainty, 2012) De Stefano, Lucia; Schmidt, Guido; Cosens, Barbara
International Initiatives for Water Policy Assessment: A Review
(Water Resources Management, 2010) De Stefano, Lucia
The recent international agreement to implement principles of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) as a means to overcome the current world water crisis has brought about the need to measure countries’ progress towards a new way of managing water. Several governmental and nongovernmental international organizations have taken up this challenge using different methods. This paper analyzes the methodological approaches currently applied to comparative water policy assessment, points out advantages and drawbacks of the different types of initiatives, and looks at where this relatively young field of research is heading.The technical and topical constraints of existing numerical indicators, the lack of consolidated qualitative assessments and the difficulty to measure real water policy implementation are among the main challenges to be addressed in the near future in the context of water policy assessment
Rural water for thirsty cities: a systematic review of water reallocation from rural to urban regions
(Environmental Research Letters, 2019) Garrick, Dustin; De Stefano, Lucia; Yu, Winston; Jorgensen, Isabel; O'Donnel, Erin; Turley, Laura; Aguilar Barajas, Ismael; Dai, Xiaoping; De Souza Leão, Renata; Punjabi, Bharat; Schreiner, Barbara; Svensson, Jesper; Wight, Charles
Background: Competition for freshwater between cities and agriculture is projected to grow due to rapid urbanization, particularly in the Global South. Water reallocation from rural to urban regions has become a common strategy to meet freshwater needs in growing cities. Conceptual issues and associated measurement problems have impeded efforts to compare and learn from global experiences. This review examines the status and trends of water reallocation from rural to urban regions based on academic literature and policy documents. Methods: We conduct a systematic literature review to establish the global reallocation database (GRaD). This process yielded 97 published studies (academic and policy) on rural-to-urban reallocation. We introduce the concept of reallocation 'dyads' as the unit of analysis to describe the pair of a recipient (urban) and donor (rural) region. A coding framework was developed iteratively to classify the drivers, processes and outcomes of water reallocation from a political economy perspective. Results: The systematic review identified 69 urban agglomerations receiving water through 103 reallocation projects (dyads). Together these reallocation dyads involve approximately 16 billion m3 of water per year moving almost 13 000 kilometres to urban recipient regions with an estimated 2015 population of 383 million. Documented water reallocation dyads are concentrated in North America and Asia with the latter constituting the majority of dyads implemented since 2000. Synthesis: The analysis illustrates how supply and demand interact to drive water reallocation projects, which can take many forms, although collective negotiation and administrative decisions are most prevalent. Yet it also reveals potential biases and gaps in coverage for parts of the Global South (particularly in South America and Africa), where reallocation (a) can involve informal processes that are difficult to track and (b) receives limited coverage by the English-language literature covered by the review. Data regarding the impacts on the donor region and compensation are also limited, constraining evidence to assess whether a water reallocation project is truly effective, equitable and sustainable. We identify frameworks and metrics for assessing reallocation projects and navigating the associated trade-offs by drawing on the concept of benefit sharing.