News and Articles

The study reviews the present status of urbanization in the developed and developing countries and assesses the changes in urban hydrological cycle owing to this. The softwares used for studying urbanization and sanitation issues in the urban areas have been reviewed.

The report tries to review the hydrological studies done in the northeastern region of India by all agencies, governmental or non-governmental. Sufficient care has been taken to include all the salient features of the studies to make it comprehensive. The various information  included in this report are the purpose and year of study, location and extent of the study area with its brief description, data used, list of specific studies along with its results and recommendations wherever possible.

An attempt has been made to pull together all the studies related to hydrology and its allied field. Besides these planned studies done by various departments, research studies done by academic institutions and research and development organizations has also been included.

The hydrological inventory of Ganga basin provides information regarding availability of hydrological data and highlights major hydrological problems of the basins. The information is a useful input in water resources planning, management and research activities.

The study endeavors to test the Storm Water Management Model (SWMM) in an urban area. The report presents the technical summary of the model, its structure, interaction between the various blocks of SWMM, the input requirements and the output. The Windows implementation of the blocks, including descriptions of the screen sequences, corresponding blocks, changes made for ease of use and limitations of the implementation are presented. The minimum hardware requirements and installation information for the Windows SWMM are discussed.

The study estimates the average contribution of snow and glacier melt runoff in the annual flow of Satluj river at Bhakra dam. This study is restricted to the Indian part of Satluj basin. A water balance approach was used to determine the average snow and glacier contribution to the annual flows.

The study undertakes hydrological investigations to develop a conceptual model for the water balance of Lake Nainital in Kumaon Himalayas. All the components of lake water balance, except the sub-surface ones, have been measured or estimated using standard methods like isotope mass balance method in conjunction with the conventional water balance method. The sub surface outflow from the lake was assessed by studying the hydraulic interconnection of the lake and downstream springs using environmental tracers.

The study deals with flood estimation through computation of a flood hydrograph for the ungauged Narmada catchment upto Jamtara using the physical and geo-morphological characteristics of the catchment. The catchment area of 17100 sqkm has been sub-divided into five sub-catchments for the purpose of flood estimation.

The study attempts to do field and laboratory determination of soil classification properties in the Dudhnai river basin of Assam and Meghalaya. Point infiltration tests using double ring infiltrometer were conducted at various locations (forty-four sites) in respect of different land use conditions. Soil samples were collected from these infiltration testing sites.

The saturated hydraulic conductivity was determined in the field using Guelph Permeameter for the selected sites. The undisturbed soil samples and disturbed soil samples (50 cm below the ground) were collected and subjected to elaborate laboratory tests. 

The study was taken up as a part of the representative basin studies being done by NIH and involved hydrological land use & land cover mapping for the Suddagedda basin of Andhra Pradesh. Mapping was carried out through visual interpretation for the years December 1987, April 1989, December 1992 and November 1996 using IRS IB-LISS II, LANDSAT 5-TM and IRS IC-LISS III data.

Land use and land cover are the most important surface characteristics of a basin. They are very dynamic features over space and time and it is difficult to get real time information on them through conventional means. Planners need to update knowledge of natural resources, which can be obtained quickly, economically and accurately through remote sensing techniques. Further, the land use map of a basin or region provides hydrologically significant categories, which are essential for estimation of reliable runoff from ungauged basins.

The study attempts to find out the effects of geomorphology on watershed runoff response in the Devak basin and tries to identify the parameters that are more closely related to runoff. A chief objective of the study is to regionalize the hydrologic models describing the rainfall-runoff process. 

The advanced knowledge of geomorphology of the region is of importance in the field of flood control measures and engineering projects, since geomorphological characteristics of river basins in mountainous areas affect runoff processes and formation of floods in the areas.