Long-Term Water Resource Management and Planning in Water-Scarce Regions

Dear Colleagues,

In many regions, climate change, past water allocation decisions, and deteriorating water quality pose the challenge of meeting future water demands with limited available water resources, while also protecting natural systems. Addressing the water scarcity challenges requires communities to develop long-term management and planning approaches to guide water use, allocation, and funding decisions. Water resource development and management projects often require significant investments and lengthy design and implementation periods; the lifespan for such projects can be 30 or more years. Forecasting future water needs in different geographical scales, estimating supply limits for traditional and alternative water sources, determining the needs of natural systems, and accounting for long-term socioeconomic, demographic, and climate trends are crucial to developing long-term management and planning strategies.

This Special Issue seeks contributions from various disciplines that address long-term water resource planning and management issues in water-scarce regions. Research contributions will discuss topics including but not limited to:

• Water demand projections for various economic sectors, such as agricultural, urban, industrial, and energy sectors;
• The water needs of the natural systems: estimation, protection, and restoration strategies;
• Assessment of water availability and development costs for various water supply sources, such as reclaimed/reuse water, ground and surface water, aquifer storage and recovery, and seawater;
• Accounting for long-term trends in climate, demographic, and economic systems;
• Costs and benefits associated with various water allocation strategies;
• Estimation of the long-term expenditures needed to meet the growing water demand in a region;
• Implications of different funding strategies used to develop new water supply sources;
• Impacts of weather and climate variability and change on the long-term water supply management and planning;
• The role of water conservation in offsetting water increase;
• Community involvement in long-term water supply planning.

Assoc. Prof. Tatiana Borisova
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Water is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• water-scarce regions
• long-term
• planning
• management
• water demand
• water supply
• natural systems
• expenditures
• investment strategies
• funding
• climate
• population increase
• economic expansion