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Water is a scarce resource in arid regions, and hence water harvesting is critically important in these regions for which many different means are adopted including groundwater and rainwater harvesting. This paper examines the feasibility of rainwater harvesting from roof catchments in arid regions of Australia. For this, ten representative locations in the arid regions of Australia are selected. Also, ten different sizes of rainwater tanks ranging from 5 kL to 50 kL and three different combinations of water uses are considered. A model is developed to simulate the performance of a rainwater harvesting (RWH) system. It is found that the reliability of a RWH system is highly dependent on mean annual rainfall at the location of interest. It is found that a 20 kL tank can provide a reliability of 61%–97% for toilet and laundry use depending on the location within the Australian arid regions. At the current water price, RWH system is not financially viable in the Australian arid regions. The methodology adopted in this paper can be adapted to other similar arid regions of the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The management of dryland environments involves the interaction of multiple government agencies and citizens, and is required to respond to a wide range of responsibilities and aspirations for a given region. This paper focuses on the characteristics of engagement between management agencies and citizens in a dryland region, presented here as a series of success factors. These factors are based on empirical research carried out in the Lake Eyre Basin in Australia, one of the world’s largest inwardly draining basins. The results reinforce generic and dryland-specific factors supporting successful community engagement. The former, such as building trust, working in partnership, supporting community champions, and maintaining transparency, are necessary but insufficient for achieving successful community engagement in the case study region. In addition, community engagement in the case study region also required respecting the extreme conditions and extraordinary variability of the Basin and committing to longer timeframes even if the outcomes of community engagement are slow to accrue, in order to take advantage of opportunities in more prosperous times. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper describes strongly developed vegetation bands that are not aligned along the contour. This previously unreported oblique vegetation banding is developed in an arid region of mixed tussock grasses and chenopod shrubs in western New South Wales, Australia.In two of four contour-mapped, 0·5 ha quadrats, the vegetation bands are oriented at angles of 45–70° to the direction of slope. Various soil features indicative of a runoff and runon hydrology, very similar to those classically reported from contour-parallel vegetation banding, suggest that the oblique configurations have been stable for a considerable time.In addition to the unusual band orientation, marked variations in the ratio of intergrove width to grove width were found within the study area, spanning the range 0·21–4·95, and there was generally no correlation between intergrove width and the width of the grove receiving runoff water from it. These findings cast doubt on the supposed close adjustment of intergrove dimensions to grove water requirements.In nearby plots having ordinary contour-parallel vegetation banding, the absence of any upslope motion of the pattern was demonstrated using monuments installed at band margins 6 years previously.These properties do not accord with the predictions of many models of the development of vegetation banding. However, soil changes associated with the runoff–runon system operating within vegetation bands may be involved in stabilizing their configurations. Thus, future investigations into the origin of vegetation banding must distinguish between their form and hydrologic functioning once established, and the fundamental origin of the vegetation pattern, which may be altogether different. In addition, pedologic and other processes which may inhibit free pattern adjustments must be incorporated into models addressing the development of vegetation banding. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]