ANNOUNCEMENTS
The snow cover plays a vital role in mountainous (Himalayan) region as the snowmelt contributes a significant amount to the total discharge. In perennial rivers, snowmelt is one of the important source of freshwater. With climate change the snow fall and its cover is also depleting which will affect the land use land cover, agricultural activities, water availability, power generation, etc. accurate estimation of snowmelt runoff will help in efficient management and planning of water resources, flood forecasting, hydropower generation. The study has been done to estimate the snowmelt runoff in Beas river basin upto Pandoh using temperature index based approach and energy balance approach and comparison between the two for the study area. The hydro-meteorological data was taken from Bhakra Beas Management Board (BBMB) for Manali, Sainj, Banjar, Larji, Parbati, Jhanjhel, Bhuntar and Pandoh gauge stations. The topographic information such as elevation and slope were extracted from ASTER DEM. The soil texture information and land use land cover were taken from NBSSLUP and ISRO-GBP, respectively. For temperature index based approach Soil and Water Tool (SWAT) was used, whereas, for energy balance approach Variable Infiltration Capacity (VIC) model was used. The simulation period for the model was 1995 to 2017 with 3 year warm up period (1995-1997). SWAT model could not simulate snowmelt well for all the subbasin as it only considers temperature. For comparing both models correlation between simulated discharge and observed discharge was calculated in which the VIC model had comparatively strong correlation between simulated and observed correlation.
Keywords: Hydrological modelling, Snowmelt runoff, VIC, SWAT, Temperature Index based model, Energy balance model
