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Climate change adaptation capacity remains low among vulnerable communities in developing countries such as Vietnam. Vector-borne diseases as dengue fever are increasing as a result of changing weather patterns. This study aims to examine the impact of key psychological variables in the Theory of Reasoned Action, the Theory of Planned Behavior, an Extended Parallel Process Model and the Social Cognitive Theory on the intention of schoolchildren to engage in climate change adaptation behavior—in this study, practices which would help reduce the risks of contracting dengue fever. It also seeks to identify the most salient predictors of the behavioral intention across these theories. Data were obtained from 796 Vietnamese schoolchildren who completed questionnaires measuring constructs of the four theories. Multivariate data analysis demonstrated that self-efficacy and severity appeared to be significant and consistent predictors of the individual's intention to reduce dengue fever. The results provide practical suggestions for the use of the theorical constructs tested in climate change communication campaigns in Vietnam and insights generally on pro-environmental behavior change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue including the effects of climate change on water availability, freshwater resources and climate change, and water governance.

This article assesses the impact of the tensiometer on the consumption of groundwater and electric power in paddy cultivation in Indian Punjab, and its subsequent economic benefits. We find that compared to the continuous flooding method, the tensiometer-based application of irrigation reduces water and power consumption by 13%, cutting variable costs by 7% without any yield penalty. If 30% of the paddy area is irrigated following tensiometer-based schedules, then the state could save a total of 0.67 million ha m of water and 1516 million kWh of electric power in 2010-2025, with aggregate economic benefits of US$ 459 million. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Obtaining representative meteorological data for watershed-scale hydrological modelling can be difficult and time consuming. Land-based weather stations do not always adequately represent the weather occurring over a watershed, because they can be far from the watershed of interest and can have gaps in their data series, or recent data are not available. This study presents a method for using the Climate Forecast System Reanalysis (CFSR) global meteorological dataset to obtain historical weather data and demonstrates the application to modelling five watersheds representing different hydroclimate regimes. CFSR data are available globally for each hour since 1979 at a 38-km resolution. Results show that utilizing the CFSR precipitation and temperature data to force a watershed model provides stream discharge simulations that are as good as or better than models forced using traditional weather gauging stations, especially when stations are more than 10 km from the watershed. These results further demonstrate that adding CFSR data to the suite of watershed modelling tools provides new opportunities for meeting the challenges of modelling un-gauged watersheds and advancing real-time hydrological modelling. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool ( SWAT) model (Arnold et al., 1998) is a popular watershed management tool. Currently, the SWAT model, actively supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Texas A&M, operates only on Microsoft® Windows, which hinders modelers that use other operating systems ( OS). This technical note introduces the Comprehensive R Archive Network ( CRAN) distributed ' SWATmodel' package which allows SWAT 2005 and 2012 to be widely distributed and run as a linear model-like function on multiple OS and processor platforms. This allows researchers anywhere in the world using virtually any OS to run SWAT. In addition to simplifying the use of SWAT across computational platforms, the SWATmodel package allows SWAT modelers to utilize the analytical capabilities, statistical libraries, modeling tools, and programming flexibility inherent to R. The software allows watershed modelers to develop a simple hydrological watershed model conceptualization of the SWAT model and to obtain a first approximation of the minimum expected results a more complicated model should deliver. As a proof of concept, we test the SWAT model by initializing and calibrating 314 U.S. Geological Survey stream gages in the Chesapeake Bay watershed and present the results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Communicating climate risks to vulnerable groups motivating them to take adaptive actions remains a significant challenge in many populations, especially to children. The theory of reasoned action (TRA) suggests that attitude and subjective norms are important for persuasive communication. This study assesses how to apply TRA, its constructs and other relevant factors to predict behavior intention and beliefs and to change behavior tendency. The randomized field experiment method was applied to explore the differences between pre- and post-communication treatments (2 × 2 design). Can Tho city, located in the Mekong Delta of Vietnam, was selected as the research context because of its vulnerability to climate change. The results show that, first, TRA was found to be a significant predictor model of children’s climate change behavior intentions. Second, attitude has a significant effect on the children’s intention to act while videos with subjective norm treatment had not. The treatment interaction of both constructs also had a significant effect. Third, TRA theory-based treatments are positively associated with changes in children’ salient beliefs on attitude and normative belief on social norm toward climate change. In addition, past practices, knowledge and gender are further factors that influence children’s behavior intentions. A theory-inspired design of communication strategy allows the prediction and influencing of intentions. This finding has strong implications for both research and development in Vietnam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]