Rivers

Assam represents a highly flood-prone region characterized by severe hazards of floods. Although occurrence of flood has been an age-old phenomenon in the riverine areas of this region, the extent of damage caused by floods has increased significantly in recent years.

To what extent farmers and water resource managers already practice adaptive management and whether it is practiced in an optimal manner or could there be areas for improvement based on recent advancements in the theory of adaptive management are some of the questions that are particularly appropriate in the light of rapid changes in river basin water use and also in relation to basin closure.

This paper draws on the development and use of water resources in the Lower Bhavani Project (LBP), with the LBP reservoir and the 84,000 hectare (ha) LBP command area. The project diverts water from the Bhavani River, a tributary of the Cauvery River in Tamil Nadu.

The restructuring is being proposed primarily to adopt river basins as the fundamental block for integrated planning, development and management of water resources in the country. 

The focus is concepts that capture the hybridity of irrigation systems as complex systems, and cross the boundaries of the natural and social sciences. 

This report by United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) reviews the importance of inland fisheries as an ecosystem service, the pressures upon them, and management approaches to sustain them and thus helps inform future approaches to conservation and management of freshwater ecosystems.

There is an urgent need for major investment in policy and management approaches that address the direct and indirect drivers of aquatic ecosystem degradation and loss of inland fisheries taking into account their role in sustainable development and human well being. The UNEP Ecosystem Management Programme (UNEP-EMP) provides an effective framework for pursuing this challenge.

To provide the background hydrological information for the assessment of environmental flow requirements at four selected ‘Environmental Flow’ sites, a hydrological model was set up to simulate the catchment in the present state (with water regulation  infrastructure) and to generate the natural flows (without water regulation infrastructure).

This paper published in the Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge makes an attempt to record the fisheries related indigenous technological knowledge in terms of fishing crafts and gears used in river Krishna.

Guest post by: Chicu

This paper in the Journal of Earth System Science deals with a study by National Institute of Oceanography (NIO), Goa to investigate the influence of monsoonal rainfall on hydrographic conditions in the Mandovi River of India. The study was undertaken at a location approximately 2 km upstream of the mouth of the estuary.

This paper in Journal of Earth System Science deals with paleochannel and paleohydrology of the Middle Siwalik (Pliocene) fluvial system in Northern India. In recent years, fluvial sedimentologists have carried out numerous studies to estimate quantitative hydrodynamics of ancient fluvial systems, particularly, their morphology and hydrology. The methods for reconstructing the morphology and hydrology employ either several groups of empirical relationships derived from modern fluvial environments or dynamic models of fluvial flow and sediment transports in alluvial reaches.