Water Resources in Arid Lands: Management and Sustainability

This book presents the most recent innovative studies in the field of water resources for arid areas to move towards more sustainable management of the resources. It gathers outstanding contributions presented at the 2nd International Water Conference on Water Resources in Arid Areas (IWC), which was held online (Muscat, Oman) in November 2020. Papers discuss challenges and solutions to alleviate water resource scarcity in arid areas, including water resources management, the introduction of modern irrigation systems, natural groundwater recharge, construction of dams for artificial recharge, use of treated wastewater, and desalination technologies. As such, the book provides a platform for the exchange of recent advances in water resources research, which are essential to improving the critical water situation and to move towards more sustainable management of water resources.

Prof. Anvar Kacimov, Affiliation: Sultan Qaboos University (SQU), College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Department of Soils, Water and Agricultural Engineering OmanBSc-MSc, PhD (in fluid mechanics) from Kazan University, USSR,1982, 1987. Work history: 1982-1998 at Kazan University, Departments of Seepage, Department of Mathematical Analysis. Since 1998 with SQU, Oman as Assistant-Associate-Full Professor, HoD (2007-2012), Director of SQU Water Research Centre (2011-2012), Dean of CAMS (2012-2015). Areas of interest: fluid flows, heat and mass transfer through porous media (soils, aquifers, oilformations), mathematical modelling. Applications: hydroecology, soil physics, irrigation and drainage, hydraulic and hydrologic engineering, groundwater hydrology, fluid mechanics, reservoir engineering. Publications: 159 papers in refereed journals (in English) and 2 co-authored books (in Russian). Selected awards: Best Reviewer of Vadose Zone Journal, SSSA (2005), Best Reviewer of J. of Irrigation and Drainage Eng., ASCE (2013), Research and Innovation Award in Water Sciences, The Research Council, Oman (2018).

Dr. Slim Zekri is Professor and Head of the Department of Natural Resource Economics at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Oman. He earned his Ph.D. in Agricultural Economics and Quantitative Methods from the University of Cordoba, Spain. He is an Associate Editor of the journal of Water Economics and Policy. Dr. Zekri has worked as a consultant for a range of national and international agencies on natural resource economics, policy and governance, agriculture, and water economics in the Middle East and North Africa. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Group of the FAO's Globally Interesting Agricultural Heritage Systems. His main research interests are in Water Economics & Policy and Environmental Economics. In 2017 he was awarded the Research and Innovation Award in Water Science from the Sultan Qaboos Higher Center for Culture & Science in the Scientific Publications Category.

Dr. Mingjie Chen holds a B.E. in Environmental Engineering (1997) from Tsinghua University (China), an M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences (2000) from Peking University (China) and a Ph.D. degree in Hydrogeology (2005) from University of California, Santa Barbara (USA). After 10 years of research experience in Los Alamos National Lab, Tufts University, Lawrence Livermore National Lab in the USA, Dr. Chen joined Water Research Center, Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) in 2014 as a senior hydrogeologist. Dr. Chen's research focuses on using laboratory experiments, mathematical models and numerical techniques to study multiple fluids (water, oil, gas) flow and contaminant transport in the subsurface area. He has conducted more than 20 research projects on underground environment remediation, hydrocarbon reservoirs, CO2 utilization and sequestration, geothermal reservoir, groundwater modeling, and management. At present, Dr. Chen serves as the Associate Editor for the Arabian Journal of Geosciences，Hydrogeology Journal, and Journal of Hydrology.

Dr. Talal Al-Hosni holds a BSc in Earth Sciences (1999) from Sultan Qaboos University (Oman) and an MSc in Hydrogeology (2001) from Birmingham University (UK). He received a scholarship from Oman government in 2003 to continue with his PhD study in chemical Hydrogeology at Melbourne University (Australia). After his PhD in 2007, Al-Hosni joined the Department of Earth Sciences at Sultan QaboosUniversity as an Assistant professor in the area of Hydrogeology and Environmental Geology. He worked as a Theme Supervisor (Omani Land) in the Omani Encyclopedia for the period 2008-2009. Since 2012, he is a member of the scientific Committee for the Oman Mountains Atlas Project. Talal is one of the Oman representatives in Group B of the CTBTO. He was the deputy director in the Center for Environmental Studies and Research at Sultan Qaboos University (2018-2019) and is now the head of Earth Sciences Department. He is a geology expert in the courts of Oman. Areas of interest: mainly hot springs, groundwater recharge, intra-aquifers mixing, and usage of bottled water and its impact. Al-Hosni contributed to teaching a number of courses including environmental geology and hydrogeology and developed a number of training courses in the area of EIA of mining and groundwater management. Kaveh Madani is an environmental scientist, educator, and activist, working at the interface of science, policy, and society. He has previously served as the Deputy Vice President of Iran in his position as the Deputy Head of Iran's Department of Environment, the Vice President of the UN Environment Assembly Bureau, and Chief of Iran's Department of Environment's International Affairs and Conventions Center. He is currently a Henry Hart Rice Senior Fellow at the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies of Yale University and a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Environmental Policy (CEP) of Imperial College London. He has received a number of awards for his research, teaching, as well as outreach and humanitarian activities, including the New Faces of Civil Engineering recognition in 2012, the Arne Richter Award for Outstanding Young Scientists in 2016, the Walter Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize in 2017, and the Hydrologic Sciences Early Career Scientist Award in 2019.