Jennifer Oblinger and Stephen Moysey, Clemson University
Water harvesting has become a popular approach for enhancing local water supplies in India. Thousands of check dams have been constructed by national and state governments, NGOs, and villagers. In most of these cases, little effort has been made to understand the impact of the dams on water resources, especially groundwater. Lack of knowledge of surface and groundwater balances limits effective resource management, leading to problems such as over-extraction of groundwater. In addition, it is difficult to evaluate whether villagers, who often bear the expense of installing and maintaining the dams, should be allowed to recover costs by charging downstream beneficiaries for the provision of environmental services.
In order to support effective resource management, this study was conducted to assess the impact of a check dam, constructed cooperatively by villagers and the NGO Foundation for Ecological Security, on the hydrology of a small watershed in Madhya Pradesh. To this end, local surface and groundwater balances are being developed for the watershed, supported by field mapping and data collected during a visit in spring 2007. Useful data and support for regional GIS studies exist for the area; however, quantitative site-specific data needed to complete the water balances are much more difficult to obtain. Data for key variables, such as water level measurements in wells and pumping rates, are either not collected, sampled at decadal intervals, not reliable due to human error, have restricted access, or cannot be collected due to lack of equipment and local technical expertise. Data that are available are often derived from anecdotal evidence or crude estimates averaged over large areas. Irrespective of these issues, the modeling performed in this study is providing a good qualitative understanding of hydrology in the watershed to aid villagers in managing their water resources and NGOs in planning future projects.
2008 Ground Water Summit
