For a project I'm looking at the cost and benefits of water retention in the soil versus water retention directly on the land. As of now water authorities create areas for water retention, in order to cope with excess in precipitation or meltwater. Creating and applying these areas will affect agricultural production. Further costs for damage do apply and perhaps buying up land, but how much is that and also purely the process of storing the water on the land. Anyone having thoughts, literature about this? Help is appreciated. Thanks in advance!
First of all, the question needs to be clear/brief. Per hectare of land is ok, but what do you mean by m3 of land? ....make it clear and we will proceed through ....
If you know how much a producer will earn per unitary use of water, i.e $/m3 of water, the answer is clear. For instance corn uses 63 cm of water (6300 cubic meters per hectare) and it yields 8 tons per hectare (that means that it uses 787.5 cubic meters per ton) and the rural price of one ton (1000 kgs) is about 300 usd (just as example). With this you should look for the cost/benefit relationship and see if it is worth to have a water retention project either in the soil or in a pond or other structure. You may find literature in the net I will recommend the FAO manual of water harvesting; there you will find some suggestions about this
This model may help you in your valuation of different options for water retention and hydrologic performance. Note the difference in maximum volume and event capture capacity for the two options considered.
Article Predicting Hydrology in Wetlands Designed for Coastal Stormw...
I don't think there is a direct answer to the question, as valu of land depends on utilities of the land. for certain production purposes then the value depends on price of commodity produced, or for land conservation could have different kind of values. therefore, to value the cost of land including for detention purposes would be case sensitive.
After some research and performing an interview at a water authority I can conclude so far that the costs are for constructing such retention areas lay around €1,10/m3. Operational costs are excluded from that; they depend on the necessary infrastructure and the volume of water that can be stored. The level of costs for that is still tricky to estimate but is probably less per cubic meter of water than the investment of €1,10/m3.
The total value (investment + operational) should be much lower than that of one Dutch study, which mentioned very high values, as a result of buying up the land (for the highest value), as in €88-588/m3. So there is a big range in value and it depends much on the location, size and estimated volume of water storage.
What is your opinion about it, should it lay more towards total costs of around lets say €2-5/m3 or more to €88-588/m3?
Pl elaborate your question little bit. you should spill out the final project quantum.
Otherwise just asking pro rate is meaningless
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