India’s water resources are under stress due to population growth and economic development. Water being a prime natural resource, a basic human need and a precious asset, its use needs appropriate planning, development and management. With rapid growing population and improving living standards, the pressure on our water resources is increasing and per capita availability of water resources is reducing day by day. Due to spatial and temporal variability in precipitation, the country faces the problem of flood and drought syndrome. Over-exploitation of groundwater is leading to reduction of low flows in the rivers, declining of groundwater resources and salt water intrusion in aquifers of the coastal regions. The quality of surface and groundwater resources is also deteriorating because of increasing pollutant loads from point and non-point sources. The eleventh Five Year Plan recognized the special challenges of water resources management facing India and the likelihood that these would only intensify over time due to rising population, expected growth in agricultural and industrial demand, the danger of pollution of water bodies and, over the longer term, the effect of climate stress on water availability in many parts of the country.
The present observation network (especially for hydro-meteorological variable such as precipitation, evaporation, snow melt, stream flow, runoff, infiltration) is not adequate for getting a quantified estimate of water balance in most of the river basin of the country. Therefore, existing observation network needs to be augmented with additional observing stations. Though the NCMRWF provides real-time weather and climate information in variety of spatial and temporal scales, these are not customized for user needs. Recently, there have been requests from few reservoirs management boards (such as Bhakra Beas Management Board) for customized predictions which can be input to hydrological models for efficient management of water in the reservoir. Therefore, the existing hydrological, weather and climate models have to be integrated, evaluated and calibrated for each catchment area and river basin. The calibrated models are required to run with different future climate scenarios to predict the likely impact on hydrological response at basin scale.
(v)To assess the impact of sea level changes on saline ingress in coastal zones.
Development of hydrological resource assessment and management tools to quantify possible response to climate change and variability.
(Rs. In crores)
Name of the Scheme | 2012-13 | 2013-14 | 2014-15 | 2015-16 | 2016-17 | Total |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Modelling of Changing Water Cycle and Climate | 19.0 | 24. 0 | 29.0 | 29.0 | 19.0 | 120.0 |
Last Updated On 04/07/2015 - 12:57 |