News and Articles

The report presents flood plain mapping of Phulbari area within the flood plains of Brahmaputra basin in the States of Assam and Meghalaya using satellite data. Flood is a natural calamity in which most parts of the north-eastern region are ravaged. Management of the problem in these disastrous flood affected areas often requires flood plain mapping for protection and resource development. This has mostly being done in real time on the basis of time consuming and often hazardous ground based surveys.

These guidelines drafted by Department of Rural Development (Andhra Pradesh) are conceptualized in the broad framework of the Hariyali guidelines and the experiences from Andhra Pradesh Rural Livelihoods Programme (APRLP), and are intended to strengthen the processes, and provide clarity and purposefulness in implementation of watershed development projects in Andhra Pradesh. They have been formulated on the basis of several process studies undertaken as well as through wide-ranging consultations with all stakeholders and experts.

This manual by the Uttar Pradesh Water Sector Restructuring Project - UP Department of Irrigation, written for Water User's Associations (WUAs), provides guidelines for restoring under-performing minors (irrigation channels which carries water to the fields) in the state, to their original design characteristics before the maintenance and management of minors is transferred to the WUAs. This is a prerequisite for making the use of irrigation water economical and efficient, and for introduction of volumetric system of water flow.

This report by the National Commission for Women looks at social conflict and tension that arise due to water crises and analyses the impact of these on women. The stress on water resources is a result of rapidly rising population and changing lifestyles, which have increased the need for fresh water. Intense competition among water users from agriculture, industry and domestic sector is pushing the ground water table deeper. Women bear the burden of fetching drinking water in rural areas and if opportunity costs are taken into account, it would translate to about 150 million women days each year. This amounts to a loss of a whopping 10 billion rupees per year to the national exchequer.

The report deals with estimation of evaporation losses from water surface in Tawa reservoir in Hoshangabad district of Madhya Pradesh. The study is third in the series of evaporation studies to assess the adaptability of different methods for estimation of evaporation from free water surfaces in semi-arid areas. The estimates of evaporation from free water surface obtained by four methods namely Penman, Kohler, Van Bavel and Morton are compared with observed pan values on monthly, seasonal and annual basis.

The report deals with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) based rainfall-runoff modeling using Topography Model (TOPMODEL) for the Hemavathy catchment of Cauvery basin in Western Ghats of Karnataka. The TOPMODEL is a variable contribution area model in which the predominant factors determining the formation of runoff are represented by the topography of the basin and a negative exponential law linking the transmissivity of the soil with the vertical distance from the ground level.

The study deals with the analysis of surface and groundwater flow process in Dakshina Kannada district in Western Ghats of Karnataka. The area receives over 4000 mm rainfall annually but is still faced with acute shortage of freshwater during summer months. The study attempts to identify the surface and sub-surface flow process through geohydrological and geomorphological investigations in the Sithanadhi and Netravathi basins.

The report presents the hydrologic information and news available from print media and various government agencies mostly for the year 1999-2000 compiled problem-wise and basin-wise for the whole country.

The study attempted to estimate the actual crop evapotranspiration from minimum weather data of Tavanur, Kerala and resulted in an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model, which makes use of average temperature data to estimate the actual evapotranspiration. The effectiveness of this model was evaluated using various statistical indices. The results of this model were compared with various existing techniques. The analysis led to the conclusion that the ANN models were performing better than all existing techniques for computing the actual evapotranspiration. However, the study was based on a single season lysimeter data and more research work may be required to reinforce this conclusion.

The study deals with identification of water quality monitoring sites on Kshipra river of Ujjain. The location of permanent sampling station is probably the most critical factor in a monitoring network which collects water quality data. If the samples collected are not representative of the water mass, the frequency of samplings as well as the mode of data interpretation and presentation become inconsequential.