BGU Prof. Alon Tal and his co-authors have been awarded the top prize in the first annual International Journal of River Basin Management competition. Tal and his co-authors from the Jacob Blaustein Institutes for Desert Research were recognized for their article entitled “Chemical and biological monitoring in ephemeral and intermittent streams: a study of two transboundary Palestinian-Israeli watersheds.” The article was chosen from among all of those which ran in the journal in 2010.
“Amongst many excellent papers published in the JRBM in 2010, the paper by Tal et al. stood out as a clear embodiment of science that JRBM should seek to promote. In their paper, Tal and colleagues the Institutes on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide came together in a spirit of co-operation to address a pressing regional environmental issue,” wrote Prof. Paul Bates, Editor In Chief of JRBM of Cabot Institute, University of Bristol, UK.
"More importantly perhaps for the wider field of river basin management, the paper demonstrates that high quality, rigorous science is essential in order to allow the adoption of evidence -based policy and decision making. Despite the large number of journal papers now published on river basin management every year, very few connect science and management in the fundamental way that has been achieved here. “When one also considers the transboundary nature of the problem studied by Tal and his colleagues and the highly complex local political context it becomes clear what a singular achievement this work represents,” he continued.
The article described the joint monitoring and restoration of the Besor and Alexander streams undertaken by Israelis and Palestinians.
The prize will be awarded this week in Vienna at the International Association of Hydraulic Engineering and Research Conference on ‘The Status and Future of the World’s Large Rivers’ by the Association’s president.
Tal is an associate professor in the Swiss Associates Institute for Dryland Environmental Research. One of the foremost environmental activists in Israel, he is the founder of the Israel Union for Environmental Defense, a co-founder of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies and the Green Movement, Israel’s environmental political party of which he was recently elected co-chair.
