Comparative analysis of river basins of India- water balance study using geoinformatics
Student name: Ms Parisha Bankhwal
Guide: Dr Devesh Sharma
Year of completion: 2010
Host Organisation: Regional Remote Sensing Centre/ISRO (West), Jodhpur
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr J. R. Sharma
Abstract: Water is the primal necessity of life. With limited availability judicious planning and management is needed to use and conserve this natural resource. Assessment of the water resources help to control the water demand and supply. In India, a country with great variability in terms of water distribution has large capacity to further explore the water resources with proper planning and management. Water resources potential of India is 1869.4 BCM. Out of which 690 BCM is surface water resource and 433 BCM is the ground water resource. With growing population the availability of water is decreasing as the demand in various sections is also increasing.
The rapid development of industries and other sectors, the water need in coming years will continue to rise, forming a water scarcity condition. In this view, storage of water has become important. With storages of more than 4700, India has storage capacity of 225 BCM from the completed projects. Water balance can be used as a tool to determine the unified resources. It is the depiction of quantified hydrological cycle to determine the status of the water resources. Water balance provides a criterion for developing new water structures.
The water balance study was done in parts of Jodhpur and Barmer district. Water balance was determined using three input parameters: precipitation, runoff and evapotranspiration. Theissian interpolation was used to obtain precipitation values in the study area. Curve Number method was applied to determine runoff depth, while Thornthwaite and Mather’s model was used to determine evapotranspiration.
The monthly water balance reflects the significant role evapotranspiration plays over precipitation in water availability of semi-arid area. Per pixel approach gives an intensive estimation of runoff. The results demonstrate the capability of GIS in quantifying the hydrological cycle to determine the status of water resources.
Key words: Water, GIS, Precipitation, Runoff, Evapotranspiration, Water balance.
