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Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2010. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on April 19, 2010). "Spring 2010." At head of title: University of Alberta. "A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Agricultural and Resource Economics, Department of Rural Economy."

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on August 14, 2009). A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of master of science in agricultural and resource economics, Dept. of Rural Economy.

Thesis (Ph.D.)(Agricultural Economics)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Includes summary. Includes bibliographical references. Available on the Internet via the World Wide Web.

This research aimed to critically appraise the nature and application of social marketing to promote water efficiency within tourism accommodation. Social marketing is the use of standard marketing techniques to change behaviour for a social goal. Efforts to promote water efficiency in this context are needed as it has been acknowledged that the tourism industry generally increases per capita water consumption per individual. To alleviate this issue, research engaged a diversity of stakeholders, unique to similar past efforts, through four stages of research. Stages One and Two engaged managers of tourism accommodation in focus groups and interviews. Managers reported a high interest in changing guest behaviour but emphasized the guest experience was paramount. They identified that most initiatives aiming to promote water efficiency in the existing literature were not viable within their operations and instead they offered new ideas for engaging both guests and fellow managers. In Stage Three, an online questionnaire was conducted with 408 individuals. Results showed significant changes in most water behaviours, though not all, between home and away, indicating promoting efficiency is needed in both sites of practice. Through cluster analysis, three types of water users within the tourism accommodation were identified. Each segment displayed distinct water use patterns and willingness to participate in initiatives. The final stage engaged a panel of experts in a Delphi consultation aiming to discover consensus on evaluating and prioritizing possible initiatives emerging from previous stages. This is the first application of a Delphi consultation, for this purpose, within the field of social marketing. In addition to recommending the pursuit of certain initiatives to practitioners, the research also yielded several theoretical contributions. Primarily, there is a strong need to standardize the process and unit of analysis for measuring water consumption within tourism accommodation. Secondly, the size, type and clientele base of the business are important factors in considering water efficiency initiatives and therefore social marketing campaigns would be best designed specific to the individual needs of a particular business and not generalized across the industry. Additionally, campaigns to promote water efficiency in tourism accommodation should apply the established theories of modelling, norms creation and social capital. In general, less attention on individual actions and instead larger upstream issues affecting targeted behaviours would enable greater water savings. Finally, the Delphi consultation is recommended as an effective tool for prioritizing and evaluating social marketing initiatives.

South Africa is a water-stressed country where water availability is an important constraint to economic and social development, and will become even more so in the future if this scarce resource is not managed effectively. In order to manage this scarce supply of water, we need to value it. This study focuses on the value of water in the agricultural sector, in particular the marginal revenue of water for six irrigation commodities namely avocados, bananas, grapefruit, mangoes, oranges and sugarcane. A quadratic production function was fitted with an SUR model specification in a panel data study from 1975 to 2002 to obtain marginal revenue functions for each of the six commodities. We found that mangoes are the most efficient commodity in its water use relative to revenue generated (marginal revenue of water equals R25.43/m³ in 2002) and sugarcane the least efficient (marginal revenue of water equals R1.67/m³ in 2002). The marginal revenue of water is not an indication of the true “market” price. Neither is it an indication what the administered price should be. The marginal revenue of water is rather a guideline for policy makers to determine which industries or commodities within an industry can generate the largest revenue per unit water applied. / Dissertation (MCom (Econometrics))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Economics / unrestricted

TITLE: INFLUENCE OF IRRIGATION FREQUENCY ON CULINARY HERB GROWTH AND PRODUCTIVITY IN AN EXTENSIVE GREEN ROOF ENVIRONMENTMAJOR PROFESSOR: Dr. Alan S. Walters Southern Illinois University maintains an extensive green roof that has a growth media depth of 5-15 cm of a kiln-expanded aggregate containing perlite and ~3.5% organic matter. A study was designed to monitor the growth and productivity of culinary herbs in this environment. The first objective was to measure the vigor, growth and overwintering ability of different perennial culinary herbs under various irrigation regimes applying 1 L water/plant once a week, twice a week or once a week every 2 weeks. In this experiment, four culinary herbs were evaluated: Allium tuberosum ‘Garlic chives’, Lanandula angustifola ‘Munstead Dwarf’, Thymus vulgaris ‘Winter Thyme’, Melissa officianalis ‘Lemon Balm’. Additionally, the second objective was to evaluate the vigor, growth, and productivity of basil which is an important annual culinary herb using identical irrigation regimes. The second objective was to determine the effect of these irrigation levels on overwintering potential of the perennial culinary herbs evaluated. The perennial herb study indicated that water applications to plants either once or twice weekly provided greater dry perennial herb biomass than applying water once every 2 weeks. Regardless of the perennial herb evaluated, some weekly watering is required to provide the greatest amount of plant growth and vigor. Additionally, more frequent water applications also improved winter survival. Less frequent water applications will not only reduce plant growth and productivity but lead to perennial herb plant loss from one season to the next. Lavender was highly affected by the lack of water compared to the other perennial herbs evaluated. For most perennial herbs evaluated, the lower water applications provided less winter survival rates but not to the same extent as lavender. A 43% decrease in lavender overwintering survival rates was observed when plants received 1 L water once every two weeks, compared to the weekly irrigation applications. Basil plant growth differed among the irrigation timings evaluated in an extensive green roof environment. Generally, the twice a week application provided greater basil plant growth characters, followed by the once-a-week application, with the one water application every two weeks providing the least. Like the perennial herb experimental results, basil requires weekly water applications to maximize productivity in drought and heat stressful extensive green roof environments. This study indicates that basil is the most suitable annual for an extensive green roof environment. Our results indicated that infrequent watering of perennial herbs in an extensive green roof environment will most likely result in lower plant growth, vigor, and productivity, as well as reduce the overwintering potential of specific herbs. Thus, water management is critical to maximize productivity for herbs grown in extensive green roof environments. Although rooftops can be used to create spaces to produce edible crops, water management should be considered as an important factor to maximize their productivity.

Residential irrigation efficiency is a long-term concern for any community that faces water supply stress. When ability to raise water prices is constrained, public education and conservation programs can produce reduced water usage. Understanding the factors behind residential irrigation efficiency allows the design of more effective conservation campaigns. Combining site-specific water budgets with usage data for four hundred homes in North Texas enables quantifying efficient irrigation behavior. A survey of homeowners tests for the presence of conservation-positive attitudes and the knowledge required to implement those attitudes. The influence of neighbors’ watering habits is investigated using spatial clustering tools. Findings are analyzed in the context of an attitude, knowledge, and habit model of conservation behavior. The presence of automatic irrigation systems, small irrigated areas, and having knowledge of the amount that one waters one’s lawn are found to contribute to more intensive irrigation. Mixed evidence for small-scale clustering in irrigation intensity is presented.

Water is Australia's most precious natural resource. The quality, quantity and availability of this resource is the single factor most limiting agricultural development and sustainability in this country. Since the development of Australia's cotton industry in the 1960's, and the expanding areas of irrigated crop, there has been an increasing demand placed on the limited water resources of the country. Consequently, the cotton industry has been the target of protest from conservation groups, residents of rural townships and others farmers engaged in competing rural sectors. Therefore, cotton farmers need to develop best practice in terms of water use efficiency. Not only does this make good ecological sense but also good economic sense. Traditional methods of irrigation scheduling have proven to be subjective and haphazard. Recently developed methods, while providing more quantitative techniques, do not give a synoptic view of a field's or region's crop moisture status. The main objective of this project was to evaluate an airborne thermal scanner (8-12 µm) as practical tool for monitoring the water requirements of an irrigated cotton crop. The thermal scanner was mounted below a light aircraft and imagery was collected over Field 86 , Togo Station, north-west NSW during the summer of 1990/91. The field was divided into nine treatments for the purpose of this project. Three irrigation regimes (early, normal and late) with three repetitions were applied to the nine treatments. A total of fourteen images were selected for analysis. These images were grouped into sets of AM images, PM images as well as diurnal groupings which were interpreted for three separate dates during the growing season. Ground based measurements of infrared crop surface and soil temperature, soil moisture deficit, leaf area index (LAI) and the Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) were collected to calibrate the airborne imagery. Imagery was in the first instance visually interpreted to determine what information could be gained from this technique. Patterns on the imagery were related to diurnal variations in soil and crop temperatures. This investigation revealed a number of soil related phenomena inherent to the field which were influencing the airborne detected temperatures. While this technique showed variability across the field, the interpretation was somewhat subjective. Temperature values were extracted from the imagery in order to conduct an analysis of variance (ANOVA) between the airborne and ground measurements of infrared crop surface temperature. In summary, this analysis did not show a strong relationship between the airborne and ground based measurements. A number of contributing factors have been proposed as the reason for this variation in the two datasets. Pearson's correlation analysis was applied to the AM (r = 0.65) and PM (r = 0.32) groups of airborne and ground temperatures. Airborne derived calculations of the CWSI were compared to ground based measurements for the AM group of flights. These derived values were only acceptable in instances where the ANOVA results had shown them to approximate the ground based measurements. While airborne thermal imagery provides a useful tool for determining general variations in temperatures across a field, there are many additional factors, the most dominant being the thermal characteristics of the background soil, which influence the detected temperatures. This technique does not provide the precise quantitative information required to accurately determine across-field measurement of the CWSI.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-08-13T14:50:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2014-02-05Bitstream added on 2014-08-13T18:01:21Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000766133.pdf: 2062572 bytes, checksum: 11b4a98d518a73a4783c63af11c459cd (MD5) / O presente estudo foi conduzido na área experimental da Universidade Estadual de Goiás, Unidade Universitária de Santa Helena de Goiás, com o objetivo de avaliar características no crescimento, desenvolvimento, produção da cultura do quiabeiro e eficiência do uso da água, sob diferentes lâminas de irrigação em função da evaporação em tanque Classe A. Os tratamentos foram constituídos por cinco porcentagens da evaporação em tanque Classe A (ECA), sendo elas: 0. 50, 75, 100 e 125%. A semeadura foi realizada dia 26 de junho, e o transplantio ocorreu no dia 12 de julho de 2012. Os dados foram coletados no período de 25 de agosto de 2012 a 15 de outubro de 2012. O manejo da irrigação foi realizado apartir de um tanque Classe A, instalado dentro da área experimental. As lâminas foram aplicadas com uso de um sistema de irrigação localizado por gotejamento, com vazão de 1,7 l h-1 submetido a uma pressão de serviço de 9 mca. Utilizou-se, um turno de rega fixo de 1 dia. Os parâmetros avaliados foram: diâmetro médio dos frutos (DF); comprimento médio dos frutos (CF); número de frutos por planta (NB); produtividade, produtividade (Prod), número de frutos por planta (NF), Massa úmida da parte da parte aérea (MUPA), Massa seca da parte aérea (MSPA), Massa úmida das raízes (MUR), massa seca da raiz (MSSR) e eficiência no uso da água pela cultura. A aplicação de diferentes lâminas de irrigação influenciou de forma significativa no desenvolvimento vegetativo, reprodutivo da cultura do quiabo. A lâmina 50% da ECA apresentou uma maior eficiência quanto ao uso da água na cultura do quiabo. O modelo linear melhor ajustou ao conjunto de dados médios do parâmetro número de brotações laterais, com isso havendo necessidade de testar novas lâminas para determinar a lâmina máxima recomendada. A lâmina de irrigação que proporciona a maior produtividade foi a de 102% da ECA / The present study was conducted in the experimental area of the State University of Goiás, University Unit Santa Helena de Goiás, aiming to evaluate features in the growth, development, production culture of okra and efficiency of water use under different irrigation due to the evaporation tank in Class A. The treatments consisted of five percentages of Class A pan evaporation (ACE), as follows: 0. 50, 75, 100 and 125%. Sowing June 26 was performed, and the transplant took place on July 12, 2012. Data were collected between August 25, 2012 to October 15, 2012. Irrigation management was carried out starting from a Class A tank installed within the experimental area. The slides were applied using a system of drip irrigation located, with a flow rate of 1.7 L h-1 subjected to a pressure of 9 MCA service. We used a fixed irrigation for 1 day. The parameters evaluated were: average fruit diameter, average length of the fruit, number of fruits per plant, Productivity and Efficiency in water use by the crop. - The application of different irrigation had a significant influence on vegetative, reproductive development of the culture of okra. The blade 50 % of ECA showed greater efficiency in the use of water in the cultivation of okra. The best fit linear model to a set of parameter data, average number of side shoots, it is no need to further test strip to determine the maximum recommended blade. The depth of irrigation that delivers the highest productivity was 102% ECA