In many developing countries, the sufficient water supplies of acceptable water quality is high and although little or no emphasis is placed on the conserving the environmental quality of aquatic ecosystems, the preservation or restoration of aquatic ecosystems results in overall quality of water resources. The following questions remain. Contributions are invited that address these questions or the relation between water resources and the health of ecosystems. This session addresses the links between hydrology and food production. Prospectively, the largest global problem is population increase.
Population increase requires an increase in food supply.
The lands located along the rivers have always been very attractive for human societies. They often are fertile lands of high agricultural value and offer convenient locations for all human settlements, the value of which is enhanced by easy communication links on, along and across the rivers. But these lands are also flood plains episodically innundated by large floods, while playing a significative geomorphological and ecological role. Some civilization have choosen to live with the floods, some others have been trying for centuries to protect themselves from these threathening effects. Management of floods and planning of floodplain land use is a fundamental issue where structural and non-structural actions have to be combined in order to achieve in a satisfactory way the social and ecological goals.