Economic development, population growth, urbanization and climate change have led to an increasing water shortage across the globe. Ensuring water security under changing environment will be the greatest challenge for water resources managers in near future. In this paper, catastrophe theory...

Drought is one of the major disasters around the world which cause great social and economic hardship. Recent events of severe droughts have motivated comprehensive research on drought management in China like many other countries of Asia, Europe and Africa. In this paper, the mechanism of...

The role of an intermediate metastable state in the fluctuation-induced transitions between two stable states is analyzed using generic kinetic models involving one and two order parameters. Conditions are identified under which the transition rate can be enhanced by the presence of the...