Nile River Basin : Ecohydrological Challenges, Climate Change and Hydropolitics

The book provides a comprehensive overview of the hydrology of the Nile River, especially the ecohydrological degradation and challenges the basin is facing, the impact of climate change on water availability and the transboundary water management issues. The book includes analysis and approaches that will help provide different insights into the hydrology of this complex basin, which covers 11 countries and is home to over 300 million people. The need for water-sharing agreements that reflect the current situations of riparian countries and are based on equitable water- sharing principles is stressed in many chapters. This book explores water resource availability and quality and their trends in the basin, soil erosion and watershed degradation at different scales, water and health, land use and climate change impact, transboundary issues and water management, dams, reservoirs and lakes. The link between watershed and river water quantity and quality is discussed pointing out the importance of watershed protection for better water resource management, water accessibility, institutional set-up and policy, water demand and management. The book also presents the water sharing sticking points in relation to historical treaties and the emerging water demands of the upstream riparian countries. The need for collaboration and identification of common ground to resolve the transboundary water management issues and secure a win-win is also indicated.

Dr. Assefa M. Melesse is a water resources engineer with a background in remote sensing and geospatial applications to hydrologic modeling. He earned his M.E (2000) and Ph.D. (2002) from the University of Florida. His areas of research and experience include spatially distributed hydrologic modeling, ecohydrology, river basin management, spatial surface water balance modeling, surface and groundwater interaction modeling, spatial evapotranspiration mapping using remote sensing, water-energy-carbon fluxes coupling and modeling, remote sensing hydrology, and land-cover change detection and scaling. Dr. Melesse has ample experience in river basin modeling employing GIS and data from remote sensing and has conducted studies in the Nile basin with over 40 publications on the Nile (books, peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and proceedings). As a Fulbright Scholar, Dr. Melesse spent a year in the Blue Nile basin conducting research, organizing workshops, advising graduate students and researchers, providing professional trainings and lecturing at various universities. Dr. Melesse is a registered Professional Engineer (PE) and also Diplomate of Water Resources Engineer (D.WRE) with over 26 years of teaching, research and extension experience both in Ethiopia and the USA. Dr. Melesse is an Associate Professor of water resources engineering at the Department of Earth and Environment, Florida International University.

Dr. Wossenu Abtew is a registered professional civil engineer who has been working in the field of water resources for over 25 years. He is trained in agricultural engineering and is also a hydrologist. He earned his Ph.D. in interdisciplinary engineering focusing on civil engineering and agricultural engineering from Texas Tech University in 1989. He earned his Master of Science degree in agricultural engineering from Texas Tech University in 1986. Dr. Abtew has published a book on evaporation and evapotranspiration. He has participatedin a workshop on the Nile river basin and edited the proceedings of the workshop. Dr. Abtew has 50 publications as books, book chapters, journal and proceedings articles in addition to over 60 conference papers and technical reports. He has published papers on the Nile river basin. Dr. Abtew is a Principal Engineer at the South Florida Water Management District. He has over 23 years of experience in water resources at the South Florida Water management District. He is a water resource engineer (D.WRE) certified by the American Academy of Water Resources Engineers.

Dr. Shimelis Gebriye Setegn earned his Ph.D. in land and water resources engineering and M.Sc. in soil and water conservation engineering. Currently, he is a Program Executive Officer at the Global Water for Sustainability Program (GLOWS) and Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, Florida International University (FIU). Dr. Setegn has an interdisciplinary background and experience in environmental, hydrological and hydrodynamic modeling; watershed dynamics, predicting the impact of climate and land-use changes on water resources, agriculture and populations; GIS and remote sensing applications in the environment and water resources. Dr. Setegn has more than 19 years of teaching, research and development experience in various countries. His work on different international projects have led to several peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He has also given scientific presentations at international conferences and symposiums. Dr. Setegn has conducted many short and long courses in hydrological modeling, climate change, integrated water resources management, GIS and remote sensing in many countries.