Sustainable Groundwater Management for Upper Banas River Basin

Abstract

Groundwater is one of the most valuable natural resources, which supports human health, socio-economic development, and functioning of ecosystems. In the Upper Banas river basin there are problems of land degradation, severe erosion, declining water table and biodiversity reduction due to lack of sustainable water resources management. So, study was carried out for sustainable groundwater management in Upper Banas river basin. newlineIn this study entire catchment was divided into twenty one sub-basins. The parameters computed in the present study includes stream order, stream frequency, stream length, drainage density, bifurcation ratio, stream frequency, form factor, elongation ratio, circulatory ratio, relief ratio and ruggedness number by standard methods and formulae. The prioritization of sub-basins for application of soil and water conservation measures was carried out. It was found that the lowest compound parameters value is 7.6 occurred in the sub-basin number 10 that is given high priority for conservation measures. The groundwater quality parameter maps were prepared under GIS environment and the spatio-temporal variations also analyzed.The suitability of groundwater for irrigation use was evaluated on the basis of SAR, Kelly s Ratio (KR), Residual Sodium Carbonate (RSC), Soluble Sodium Percentage (SSP) and Permeability Index (PI). In the basin maximum area shows groundwater is suitable for irrigation purpose during pre and post monsoon period. The aquifer parameters i.e. transmissivity and specific yield were determined by eleven pumping test and it ranges from 48.558 m2/day to 330.191 m2/day and the specific yield ranges from 0.0028 to 0.03112 respectively, suggesting strong heterogeneity.Contd.... newline