GIS-based technologies for watershed management

Abstract

Due to the ever-increasing demand on water resources, the pressure on its judicious utilization is also increasing. Besides being precious, this resource is also complex to manage on account of its dynamic behaviour. It implies that the response to a unit of precipitation input is dependent on the state of wetness of the land mass and the environment prevalent at that time. Therefore, the changing weather conditions as well as the spatial variability of land mass result in nonlinear behaviour of the response of the watersheds. In a place like India, where emphasis is being placed on making the local-level users participate in the management of natural resources at the watershed level, it is imperative that these local-level organizations be strengthened by providing the integrated watershed management tools which are user-friendly, but still use all the scientific knowledge to arrive at the appropriate decisions. This article demonstrates the use of GIS-based modelling framework for local-level planning, incorporating the sustainability aspects of watershed development. A case study has been taken in Bijapur district, Karnataka to demonstrate the implementation of these new technologies for watershed prioritization.