Research Papers

This paper published in the Economic and Political Weekly highlights the recently growing conflicts over water sharing between states in India and argues that the intensity and periodicity of these conflicts are increasing and that these conflicts are expected to get worse with the increasing uncertainty of rainfall and water availability. The document goes on to describe the latest one in the news, the conflict between Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh over the Babhli barrage.

This paper by AR Shivakumar of the Karnataka State Council for Science and Technology (KSCST), presented at a national seminar organised by ISRO at NIAS Bangalore in 2010, begins by highlighting the increasing problem of scarcity of water that the city of Bangalore has been experiencing in recent years and suggests a required plan of action for a sustainable water supply system in the city.

This presentation by ACWADAM deals with Karst hydrogeology, a term used to denote the topography over limestones, dolomites or gypsum rich rocks where there are sinkholes, caverns and lack of surface streams. Karst mainly refers to carbonate rocks: Limestones (CaCO3) or Dolomites (MgCa[CO]).

The formation of carbonate rocks can be traced to physical and chemical deposition. Physical deposition is clastic in nature formed by deposition of particles carried in suspension. It is marked by higher primary porosity and low secondary porosity. Chemical deposition is in the form of precipitate formed by deposition of particles from solution. Contrary to physical deposition it is marked by low primary porosity and high secondary porosity.

The presentation by ACWADAM deals with measurement of weather parameters and outlines the methods used in weather related data collection and analysis. Weather information is necessary for the planning and implementation of watershed programmes, especially in understanding factors like groundwater recharge, the relationship between recharge & discharge and in aspects like irrigation planning.

In order to maintain the ecological goods and services of rivers and other hydrological regimes like wetlands, lakes, etc., environmental flow allocations (eflows) are a necessity. At the same time, water demands in India are increasing and will keep increasing and solutions like waste water treatment, pollution control, correction of leakages and wastage of water, efficient irrigation systems, efficient agricultural systems, etc., will take considerable time to evolve, even with our best efforts. So what should we do in the meantime? There are vulnerable ecological systems on the verge of collapse..How do we respond to these challenges?

The study was done under the "Strategic Analyses of India’s National River Linking Project", of the Challenge Programme on Water and Food (CPWF) to estimate the available runoff in the potential regions to mitigate the terminal drought in the dominant rainfed districts of India. 

The paper by International Water Management Institute (IWMI), Challenge Programme for Water and Food (CPWF) and University of Arizona deals with energy supply and expansion of groundwater irrigation in the Indus-Ganges basin. Irrigation using groundwater has expanded rapidly in South Asia since the inception of the Green Revolution in the 1970s and it represents the largest source of irrigation in the basin.

This paper by the Challenge Programme for Water and Food (CPWF) presents a simplified approach to combine remote sensing, census and weather data to analyze basin rice and wheat water productivity (WP) in Indo-Gangetic river basin, South Asia. It presents an innovative approach to combine meteorological data, ground survey, national census with remotely sensed imagery to assess water use, yield, and finally crop water productivity for the Indo-Gangetic rice-wheat cropping system in South Asia. 

The paper by Challenge Programme on Water and Food (CPWF) attempts to assess and improve water productivity in conservation agriculture systems in the Indus-Gangetic basin, in which during the past 40 years an intricate mosaic of interactions between man & nature, poverty & prosperity and problems & possibilities has emerged. Rapid expansion in agricultural water use is a common theme across these interactions and access to water is central to the livelihoods of the rural poor.

This working paper by the Challenge Program for Water and Food explores the intersection between water management, climate change, and adaptation in the Ganges River system, a basin vital to the security, economy, and environment of South Asia. 

Recognizing that an understanding of both the science and the policy of water management, climate change, and adaptation is rapidly evolving, it is not the intention of the paper to encompass all the issues related to these broad fields, but rather to provide a starting framework from which to further develop research questions and priorities for work in water and adaptation.