© 2015 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary Interbasin water transfers and diversions are among the most controversial water-resources-planning topics worldwide. They provide supply alternatives to receiving basins and potential challenges to the donor basins within a context of changing global water problems. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of global interbasin water transfer research between 1900 and 2014. The bibliometric analysis analyzes general characteristics of publications, the national, institutional, and personal research outputs, participating regions and their research activity, and global trends and hot issues in the field of water transfers. Our results show that the rate of annual publication of interbasin water transfer research grew steadily after 1972 and is rising quickly at present. The United States produced the largest number of single-country publications (37.4 %) and international collaborative publications (46.6 %). However, China had a high growth rate of publications after 2001, and surpassed the United States and ranked 1st in 2012, with the Chinese Academy of Sciences playing a leading role in the emergence of China’s research output. The global geographic distribution of publication activity shows that an increasing number of countries, agencies, and scholars have become part of the research enterprise. There is ample opportunity for cooperation between them to be strengthened in the future. The results of keyword evolution generally indicate that the research on interbasin water transfers expanded from 1991 through 2014. The hydrological and eco-environmental impacts of the South-to-North Water Transfer/Diversion Project in China and the corresponding long-term monitoring and conservation strategy have become one of the top topics of attention.

Many semi-distributed models that simulate pollutants' losses from watersheds do not handle well detailed spatially distributed and temporal data with which to identify accurate and cost-effective strategies for controlling pollutants issuing from non-point sources. Such models commonly overlook the flow pathways of pollutants across the landscape. This work aims at closing such knowledge gap by developing a Spatially and Temporally Distributed Empirical model for Phosphorus Management (STEM-P) that simulates the daily phosphorus loss from source areas to receiving waters on a spatially-distributed grid-cell basis. STEM-P bypasses the use of complex mechanistic algorithms by representing the phosphorus mobilization and delivery processes with zero-order mobilization and first-order delivery, respectively. STEM-P was applied to a 217km² watershed with mixed forest and agricultural land uses situated in southwestern China. The STEM-P simulation of phosphorus concentration at the watershed outlet approximated the observed data closely: the percent bias (P_bias) was -7.1%, with a Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (E_NS) of 0.80 on a monthly scale for the calibration period. The P_bias was 18.1%, with a monthly E_NS equal to 0.72 for validation. The simulation results showed that 76% of the phosphorus load was transported with surface runoff, 25.2% of which came from 3.4% of the watershed area (classified as standard A critical source areas), and 55.3% of which originated from 17.1% of the watershed area (classified as standard B critical source areas). The standard A critical source areas were composed of 51% residences, 27% orchards, 18% dry fields, and 4% paddy fields. The standard B critical source areas were mainly paddy fields (81%). The calculated spatial and temporal patterns of phosphorus loss and recorded flow pathways identified with the STEM-P simulations revealed the field-scale critical source areas and guides the design and placement of effective practices for non-point source pollution control and water quality conservation.