ABSTRACT
Tropical lowland alluvial areas often combine cultivatable soils, accessible water supplies, and year-round growing temperatures. The alluvial plains provide both easier supply of inputs by road, rail, or water transport and the critical opportunity for irrigation from rivers or groundwater. The storage capacity of the sand and gravel aquifers of the lowland alluvial plains can be used in the overall water management of a river basin to balance seasonal shortages of surface water. The groundwater is pumped in dry weather to supplement surface supplies, thereby creating storage space, which is recharged from rainfall and from surplus riverflow. This system has been developed to an advanced level of control in Israel, where the salt concentrations are a vital factor in the management. The disposal of domestic and industrial wastes is usually the direct responsibility of the engineers of the local or state authorities and monitored by the medical or public health staff.
