Surface Water Resource Planning using SWAT Model and GIS based Multi Criteria Decision Analysis towards Sustainable Development of a Catchment

Abstract

In the 21st century, a major problem of water, food security and land degradation has been noticed due newlineto the high exponential growth of the population, leading to unplanned urbanization, excessive newlineutilization of both surface and ground water for various purposes and inappropriate treatment of land newlinemanagement. There is a huge alarming possibility that by 2025 India will be in the zone of water stress newlineand by 2050, India will be at high water scarcity zone stated by World Bank. In India, greater than 40% newlineof the entire land mass is prone to soil loss as it covers agricultural fields in major proportion, as well as newlineaccelerating events of siltation in the reservoirs due to climatic and socio-economic challenges. To newlineovercome this complication, proper planning and execution of conservation structures for water and soil newlineneeds to be implemented immediately. In this context, Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic newlineInformation System (GIS) techniques have been widely utilised for catchment management as the newlinecatchment is considered as the basic unit for all planning and development activities at present. Intensive newlinestudy on the catchment scale is necessary for understanding the hydrologic processes involved in runoff newlineand computation of sediment yield for developing management strategies to control soil loss. The newlinedrought prone upper Kangsabati catchment was thus chosen for surface water resource planning utilizing newlinethe SWAT model and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) technique based on geo-informatics to newlinecombat erratic rainfall and improper soil conservation as well as water harvesting scenarios. newlineThe present study was undertaken with an overall objective of understanding the hydrologic newlineprocess of runoff and computing monthly water balance components using Soil Water Assessment Tool newline(SWAT) model for the sustainable development of the catchment. The discharge simulated by the newlineSWAT model showed a satisfactory level of accuracy at the daily time step for both the calibration and newlinevalidation periods. Evapotranspi