Study and Modelling Of Water Quality In Inland Water Bodies And Its Interactions With Land Use

Abstract

Water is an essential resource for sustaining human life. The ever-increasing demand for clean water from the growing human population and other anthropogenic needs have pushed several regions into highly water-stressed areas. Diminishing freshwater resources and high amounts of water contamination are increasing the threat of severe water scarcity even further. Since the total available freshwater resources cannot be modified, the options are to maintain and/or improve water quality in water bodies and increase the reusability of the water. The former can be achieved by continuous monitoring of the water quality in the water bodies and identifying and regulating the source of contaminations that pollute these water bodies. So, water quality in rivers and large inland water bodies are being measured occasionally through in-situ approaches. While these do provide valuable inputs, they are not sufficient to understand the underlying causes for such changes in water quality, including the seasonal and other drivers of contamination. Hence, there is a need to monitor water bodies, especially the lakes and reservoirs, regularly. Constant inflows and long storage time of water with limited or no proper outflow make these water bodies much more susceptible to the adverse effects of contaminants than rivers. newline newlineThis study takes a three-pronged approach to study and understand the water quality in inland water bodies â first, by developing and evaluating a methodology for monitoring nutrient contamination and its changes in inland water bodies using remote sensing satellite data; second, to hypothesize and study the probable source of the contamination as land use and its practices; and three, to understand, analyze and model the interactions between the land use changes in the contributing watershed and the water quality to help improve the regional-scale decision making capabilities. The case study area is Nagarjuna Sagar (NS) reservoir in the Krishna River basin, one of the largest inland water bodies in India. NS is