SK Upadhye, MU Kale, SM Taley and RN Katkar

The water conservation strategies often called best management practices or BMPs are widely used as effective measures for water harvesting or runoff reduction from watershed. The lack of land use planning and the absence of conservation practices in a watershed can contribute to increased runoff. The objective of this study was to optimize the climate resilient water conservation strategies under climate change situation with special emphasis on the contribution of conservation practices in reducing average annual runoff from Manasgaon watershed located in Shegaon tehsil of Buldhana district.

The hydrological simulation was carried out by using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model, which was integrated with Arc GIS software, for one of the most important parameter of hydrology i.e., runoff. The SWAT-CUP SUFI-2 technique was used for sensitivity analysis, calibration and validation of the model. The model was calibrated using observed runoff data of watershed for ten years (1998-2007) and validated for another set of data for the period 2008-2014 (seven years) with three years data (1995 - 1997) for the warm up of the model.

The reasonably high Nash-Sutcliffe coefficient (NSE) values for the calibration and validation periods (0.81 and 0.76 respectively) indicated good performance of the model.

The strip cropping treatment was found more effective in reducing runoff followed by terracing. It has been also concluded that the scenario WCS-10 (i.e., conversion of barren land to fair pasture, strip cropping on agricultural land (0-2 %), contour farming (2-4 per cent slope), terracing (4-8 per cent slope) and farm ponds in all sub basins) is found more effective in reducing runoff followed by scenario WCS-6 (i.e., conversion of barren land to fair pasture, strip cropping on agricultural land and farm ponds in all sub basins). The combined effect of different treatments is more effective in reducing runoff than individual effect of each treatment. The calibrated and validated SWAT model can be effectively used for simulation and optimization of different water conservation strategies for Manasgaon watershed.

Pages: 307-326  |  294 Views  105 Downloads