ANNOUNCEMENTS
Groundwater, as it is evident, is a major source of freshwater all over the world. It is not only used for household, industrial and agricultural activities but is also an important contributor to the environment conservation and sustainability. The situation of groundwater in North India is grim and is decreasing at an alarming rate. Groundwater situation in North west India should be monitored in order to suggest proper land cover management practices. Here we have used SWAT model to simulate the values of flow and other groundwater parameters where the flow of the watershed is found to affect the groundwater parameters like percolation and surface water content. Calibration was done using satellite datasets like MODIS ET and Chirps monthly precipitation which showed a similar trend with the SWAT simulated precipitation and ET values. The groundwater storage anomalies were calculated using the GRACE land water storage products (TWS) and CGWB groundwater level data to confirm the declining trend of water since 2001-2014. Another plot showing the groundwater resources which was collected from the reports of CGWB confirmed that the groundwater availability has increased throughout the time from 2003-2013 due to the recharge from other sources and the water used for irrigation has also increased throughout the years. Measures need to be taken to decrease the amount of water that are extracted for irrigation because if groundwater is extracted at the rate which cannot be replenished as easily, groundwater depletion takes place.
Keywords: SWAT, GRACE, Groundwater, Simulation, North-west India
