Watershed Management Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

The arid and semi-arid agro-ecological area of Ethiopia cover more than 62% of the total land area. The Somali National
Regional State (SNRS) occupies a large geographical area in the eastern and southeastern part of Ethiopia. The area of SNRS
is estimated at 340,000 km2. This makes rangeland utilization by livestock, the largest land-use system in the country. The
rangelands in the south of the SNRS are occupied mainly by Somali pastoralists who rear mixed herds of camels, sheep, goats
and a few cattle. Rangeland degradation is the most serious challenge for pastoral livelihood in Somali Region. Major
reduction in the quantity and nutritional quality of the vegetation available for grazing in the rangelands as well as
expansion of localized deserts and barren areas are indicated. Major causes of degradation include climatic conditions,
causing drought and arid conditions, and human factors, leading to the overuse of natural resources. Livestock density and
grazing patterns lead to overgrazing, which is one of the major causes of land degradation. Overgrazing results when
livestock density becomes excessive and too many animals are grazed at the same area of rangeland, leading to degradation
of vegetation and the compaction and erosion of the soil. The uncontrolled browsing of trees and shrubs is another aspect of
overgrazing and a patent cause of deforestation, leading to flooding and siltation in adjacent areas because rains are no
longer held back by the sponge effect of the trees and carry with them large loads of eroded soil. Out of the exotic tree species
Prosopis juliflora is currently spreading and encroaching the grazing lands of SNRS and is causing severe negative impacts on
the production and productivity of rangelands. This species is spreading at an alarming rate into best grazing areas. Other
species, such as Acacia drepanolobium, A.seyal, Lantana camara, Partheniumhysterophorus, and species of Commiphora and
Opuntia are also causing serious problems by encroaching in dry and wet season grazing areas. Low and erratic rainfall is
characteristic of the rangelands, and pastoral production systems have always relied upon surface and ground water sources.
Strategic water development interventions have significant impact in contributing to improving range utilization. In the
SNRS Birca (Cistern) and Ella (hand dug wells) are normally owned and managed by individuals. The distribution and type of
water points and watering schedules are major determinants of range use. Pastoralists in SNRS have various traditional
natural resource management strategies, such as mobility and utilization, herd diversity, ecosystem knowledge, local
institution, fodder assessment and defined grazing, indigenous knowledge on species and their utilization. These indigenous
knowledges should be kept and integrated with modern rangeland management and rehabilitation coping strategies to
sustain the range ecology and the livelihood of the pastoralists.
Keywords: Rangeland degradation, rangeland management, bush encroachment, overgrazing, climate change

- by Seleshi Awulachew
- •
- Energy Economics, Land management, Behavioral Economics, Institutions

Collective action in agriculture and natural resource management is all too often perceived of in terms of the mere number of participants, with little consideration given to who participates, why, and the outcomes of inequitable participation. The literature is replete with cases of how uncritical approaches to participation structure positions of privilege vis-a-vis project benefits and the natural resource base (Munk Ravnborg and Ashby, 1996; Rocheleau and Edmunds, 1997; Schroeder, 1993). Yet lessons on how to engage with local communities in ways that promote equitable participation of women, the poor and other stakeholders are only now coming to light. This paper focuses on approaches under development under the rubric of the African Highlands Initiative to bring collective action principles to bear on gender-equitable change processes in natural resource management. The paper utilizes a number of case studies to illustrate the relative strengths and weaknesses of different app...

- by Laura German
- •
- Water, Political Ecology, Collective Action, Natural Resource Management

The study demonstrates the application of GIS technologies and digital model for watershed management in Amlasole Micro-watershed, India. Extensive processing of spatial and attribute data for the study area were performed using GIS technologies for use in WEAP model. DEM for the study area has been created from SRTM data and where Survey of India topographic map was used for validating. Satellite interpreted data for the land use and District level meteorological data were used to prepare the land use and climatic input files for the model run. Various other inputs are used based on field data and experience. With this setup, model was run successfully and the runoff results could be tested against the observed discharged data from the main stream which shows small variation from the model results. Other results could not be verified at field level. However the trend in simulated monthly inflow outflow from the catchment followed the trend in observed rainfall which indicates that the framework can be used for assessing monthly demand supply of the water in the catchment for watershed management and implementation. The model shows alternative results in “what if” questions satisfactorily for deciding more acceptable options for the watershed management purpose.

- by Larry Stetler
- •
- Natural Resources, Methodology, Water quality, Consumption
- by Ali Jamali
- •
- Watershed Management, Watershed

Landforms together make up a given terrain, and their arrangement in the landscape is known as topography. The Study Area lies between 75 0 29' 19" E and 76 0 37' 40" E longitude and 11 0 55' 54" N and 13 0 23' 12.8" N latitude. The study area covers an area of 10874.65 km 2 , having maximum length of 143.73 km. Drainage density is 1.43 km/km 2 hence area is of coarse texture. The length of overlandflow is less than 0.4 indicating more runoff less infiltration. The study of hypsometric properties of watershed using hypsometric integral (HI) and hypsometric curve retrieved in that, HI value is 0.57 and hence watershed falls under the Mature Stage. Circularity ratio is 0.26 which shows that the drainage area is less circular.

Watershed boundaries do not generally coincide with the boundaries of institutes, villages, and Gram Panchayats. It often renders surface water management difficult / inefficient. This paper explores possibilities of dividing such areas internally as Micro Surface Water Management Units (MSWMUs), taking into consideration internal ridges, valleys, water inflows, and outflows to and from the units to contiguous areas. Thus the watershed concept is applied at the micro-level, even where it does not coincide with natural watershed boundaries. This paper is an experiment taken up within the campus of National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR), Hyderabad. To test the approach for surface water management, annual runoff volume (yield) estimations were made for each MSWMUs separately using Strange’s Tables. This method turned out to be a hybrid approach for natural resources management in general and surface water management in particular using man-made administrative boundaries along with natural ridge and valley lines. It gives ways for better management of surface water especially within the administrative boundaries, but not limited to institutes, villages, and Gram Panchayats. How to do it in a technically smart way is the crux of this paper.
Keywords: micro surface water management units, MSWMU, watershed, Strange’s Tables, NIRDPR

Watershed management and early warning flood forecasting system is becoming more and more important especially in relation to anticipated climate change. The characteristics and the validation of the Cetemps HYdrological Model (CHYM) developed by the hydrological group of the Cetemps Center of Excellence are described. CHYM is a grid based model and the main physical processes concerning the hydrological cycle are implemented in the model (Todini and Ciarrapica, 2002; Sorooshian et al., 1995). In the preprocessing phase different data sources are assimilated by the model in order to reconstruct precipitation field on the area of interest. At the moment the available data are the observed rain gauge values, the forecasted MM5 precipitation fields and the satellite rainfall estimation (Grimes et al., 2003). This multisources data acquisition system using observed and forecasted data makes it possible to simulate a time window that span from few days before the event to few days after....

- by Barbara Tomassetti
- •
- Climate Change, Cellular Automata, Flood Forecasting, Early Warning
- by Pieter van der Zaag
- •
- South India, Water Management, Watershed Management, Conceptual Framework
- by Ahmed Said
- •
- Management, Water, Water quality, Water Resources Management
- by Scott Witter and +1
- •
- Engineering, Water quality, Agriculture, Urban Sprawl
- by Mark Desmeules and +1
- •
- Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering, Modeling, Watershed Management

The MIKE SHE model is able to simulate the
entire stream flow which includes direct and basic flow.
Many models either do not simulate or use simplistic
methods to determine the basic flow. The MIKE SHE
model takes into account many hydrological data. Since
this study was directed towards the simulation of surface
runoff and infiltration into saturated and unsaturated zone,
the MIKE SHE is an appropriate model for reliable conclusions.
In the current research, the MIKE SHE model
was used to simulate runoff in the area of Sperchios River
basin. Meteorological data from eight rainfall stations
within the Sperchios River basin were used as inputs.
Vegetation as well as geological data was used to perform
the calibration and validation of the physical processes of
the model. Additionally, ArcGIS program was used. The
results indicated that the model was able to simulate the
surface runoff satisfactorily, representing all the hydrological
data adequately. Some minor differentiations appeared
which can be eliminated with the appropriate
adjustments that can be decided by the researcher0s
experience.

- by Spyros Paparrizos
- •
- Hydrology, Watershed Hydrology, Watershed Management, River Basin Management
- by Gianluca Polgar
- •
- Coastal Management, Watershed Management

Watershed programme is an important intervention in dryland areas to improve livestock productivity through increased feed and fodder supply. The present study has focused on the impact of watershed interventions on crop-livestock linkages with particular emphasis on how the interventions have affected the quantity of stovers/straws as livestock feeding materials in bridging the demand-supply gap. The study has been carried out in three typical Shivalik foothill watersheds (two treated and one untreated) in the Panchkula district of Haryana state. The impact of watershed development programme has been estimated by adopting both with and without approach and before and after approach. The untreated watershed has derived 65 per cent of its total income from animal husbandry. On the contrary, this sector has contributed 42 per cent and 20 per cent in two treated watersheds. The availability of supplemental irrigation enabled the villagers to step up cropping intensity. The number of go...

- by Swarn Lata Arya
- •
- Food Policy, Water Availability, Agricultural Economics, Biology
- by Daniel Botkin
- •
- Earth Sciences, Cell Division, Biological Sciences, Environmental Sciences

Turkey has been divided into 26 basins for studies related to water resources development. Surface areas of the basins range between 6,300 – 127,500 km2, the average being approximately 30,000 km2. Compared with nested watershed classification of U.S., the average size of Turkish national basins corresponds to the third-level (basins). Currently, a forth-level (sub-basins) with an average size of 1,820 km2 reside below the basins in U.S. classification. Even these sub-basins are found to be too large to adequately serve many water resource management needs. Two additional levels (watersheds and sub-watersheds) are currently under development in order to solve this problem. Taking this fact into consideration, currently existing basins of Turkey are supposed to be too large for effective water resources management and there is a need for delineation of sub-basins in a scientific manner. In this study, the boundaries of proto-type sub-basins are determined by using DEM-based automated delineation techniques. For this purpose, 30 arc-seconds SRTM30 DEM is re-projected into an equal area projection, hydrologic sinks are filled and inaccurate elevation values are corrected. In order to prevent invalid delineation of closed basins that cover approximately 10% of the country, water bodies located at the center of these basins are extracted from Global Land Cover Characteristics dataset of USGS and excluded from the process. Among the alternatives, Deterministic-8 (D-8) algorithm with modifications by Garbrecht and Martz is used to calculate flow direction and flow accumulation grids. Using these grids, a set of candidate sub-basins are generated by applying different area thresholds. A threshold of 1,000 km2 resulted in 359 sub-basins with an average size of 1,858 km2, both of which are found to be appropriate and manageable for nationwide usage. Similarity of the average size of the delineated sub-basins to that of U.S. sub-basins also supports this result.

- by Serkan Girgin
- •
- Hydrology/Hydrography, Hydrography, Hydrology, Turkey
- by Victor Serveiss
- •
- Geography, Environmental Management, Ecology, Risk assessment

Water scarcity is a leading concern in both arid and semi arid regions. In this article the seasonal and annual rainfall and rainy days data is analysed for the years 1980-2012 to understand rainfall fluctuations in semi arid region of Sangli District of Yerla River basin, Maharashtra. The study area lies in the rain shadow zone of basaltic Deccan Traps region and receives 632.22 mm average annual rainfall. In the area the early rains are scanty and the late rains are capricious, so drought occurs repetitively. The monthly and annual rainfall and rainy days data of Vita and Tasgaon stations obtained from India Meteorological Department were analysed on the computer using Microsoft Excel. Correlation between average annual rainfall and average rainy days are calculated for each station. Temporal variations in rainfall are observed with wet and dry spells during the rainy season. September is the wettest month followed by June, October, July and August. There are little or no rainfall occurred in the pre monsoon period from February to May and sporadic showers occurred during the post monsoon period from mid October to January in the region. Nature and distribution of rainfall are essential for watersheds management and allied studies.

- by Namdev Telore
- •
- Geomorphology, Remote Sensing, Watershed Management, Applied Geography
- by Astrid Volder
- •
- Engineering, Hydrology, Invasive Species, Urbanization
- by Richarde Marques
- •
- Oceanography, Iran, Atmospheric sciences, Soil Erosion

The term Remote Sensing is applied to the study of earth's features from images taken from space through satellites, or from nearer to the earth surface using aircrafts. The major asset of Remote Sensing, namely its capability of rapid & accurate level aerial coverage, becomes crucial during the groundwater exploration in water-scare regions. The technique of remote sensing has picked up in the past half a decade, largely due to the availability of digital computers, improved communication systems, digital imaging techniques and space technology. Remotely sensed data can be said to have its origin in photography, where the information about a target area is interpreted from photographs.

- by Ashok Tejankar
- •
- Remote sensing and GIS, Watershed Management
- by Timothy O Randhir and +1
- •
- Ecological Economics, Water quality, Forest Ecology And Management, Water Treatment

Purpose: The study has been carried out to investigate and assess the significance of the potential trend of three variables viz. rainfall, temperature and runoff over the Rangoon watershed in Dadeldhura district of Nepal.Methodology: In this study, trend analysis has been carried out on monthly, seasonal and annual basis using the data period between 1979 to 2010 for rainfall and temperature and 1967 to 1996 for runoff. Mann-Kendall test and Sen’s slope estimate test were applied to identify the existing trend direction and Sen’s slope estimator test were used to detect the trend direction and magnitude of change over time.Main findings: The most important findings are, i) There is warming trends over the Rangoon watershed as Mann-Kendall statistic (Z-value) for most of the maximum temperature values are positive, ii) Rainfall and runoff affected by fluctuations every year though the annual rainfall showing a rising trend whereas runoff showing a falling trend. The rainfall seasona...

- by Deepak Khare
- •
- Environmental Science, Climate Change, Atmospheric Science, Hydrology

Smart Water Management System is essentially a system designed to gather the data on the flow of water, the pressure of the water, and the distribution of a city's/town's water. Our main goal is to enhance the existing water management system that would manage and suffice the need of the water in Urban areas. Our objectives include: To fulfill the need of water in urban areas, ensuring sustainability and security, to develop a rainwater harvesting system near the water management plant for additional usage, to create a mechanism that would detect the cause of leakage and water shortage in the supply system and to find measures to recycle the waste water obtained from the kitchen and washing machine outlet.

- by Gopinath Kumaravelu and +2
- •
- Environmental Engineering, Sustainable Water Resources Management, Water Supply, Watershed Management
- by Sandipan Ghosh
- •
- Geography, Environmental Geography, Regional Geography, Physical Geography
- by Emre Alp
- •
- Water quality, Modeling, Water Purification, Environmental Management

The ability to simulate regional precipitation realistically by climate models is essential to understand and adapt to climate change. Due to the complexity of associated processes, particularly at unresolved temporal and spatial scales this continues to be a major challenge. As a result, climate simulations of precipitation often exhibit substantial biases that affect the reliability of future projections. Here we demonstrate how a regional climate model (RCM) coupled to a distributed hydrological catchment model that fully integrates water and energy fluxes between the subsurface, land surface, plant cover and the atmosphere, enables a realistic representation of local precipitation. Substantial improvements in simulated precipitation dynamics on seasonal and longer time scales is seen for a simulation period of six years and can be attributed to a more complete treatment of hydrological sub-surface processes including groundwater and moisture feedback. A high degree of local influence on the atmosphere suggests that coupled climate-hydrology models have a potential for improving climate projections and the results further indicate a diminished need for bias correction in climate-hydrology impact studies.

- by Morten A D Larsen and +3
- •
- Climate Change, Hydrology, Climate Change Adaptation, Numerical Analysis
- by Alfredo Montañez Acuña and +1
- •
- Coral Reefs, Watershed Management
- by Kenneth Brooks
- •
- Geography, Demography, Forestry, Hydrology
- by Ashish Pandey
- •
- Natural Resource Management, Watershed Management, Case Study, Land Use
- by Davide Geneletti
- •
- Human Geography, Remote Sensing, Statistical Analysis, Land Use Change

Wetlands have value because their functions have proved to be useful to humans. The unit value for some wetlands also increases with human development (agriculture and urban) because of increased use and/or increased scarcity. Yet,... more

- by William J Mitsch
- •
- Landscape Ecology, Ecological Economics, Water quality, Human Development

Tenants and part-owners are farming an
increasing number of acres in the United States, while fullowners
are farming fewer acres. This shift in ownership is a
potential cause for concern because some previous research
indicated that tenant and part-owner farmers were less
likely to adopt conservation practices than farmers who
owned the land they farmed. If that trend persists, ownership
changes would signal a national drop in conservation
adoption. Here we examine this issue using a survey of
agricultural operators in the Clear Creek watershed in
Iowa, a state with intensive agricultural production. We
compare adoption of conservation practices, and preferences
for conservation information sources and communication
channels, between farmers who rent some portion of
the land they farm (tenants and part-owners) and farmers
who own all of the land they farm (full-owners). We find
that renters are more likely to practice conservation tillage
than full-owners, though they are less likely to rotate crops.
In addition, renters report using federal government
employees (specifically, Natural Resource Conservation
Service and Farm Service Agency) as their primary sources
of conservation information, while full-owners most frequently
rely on neighbors, friends, and County Extension.
These findings are significant for conservation policy
because, unlike some past research, they indicate that
renters are not resistant to all types of conservation practices,
echoing recent studies finding an increase in conservation
adoption among non-full-owners. Our results
emphasize the importance of government conservation
communication and can inform outreach efforts by helping
tailor effective, targeted conservation strategies for owners
and renters.

- by Caroline Gottschalk Druschke and +1
- •
- Communication, Conservation, Land tenure, Watershed Management
- by Kang-tsung Chang and +2
- •
- Geology, Geomorphology, Watershed Management, Change detection

Iran is one of arid and semi-arid regions of the world and has experimented many challenges in the sustainability of water resources. With the development of urbanization and the natural and artificial changes in land use, environments called urban watersheds have been created with different hydrological and hydrologic behaviors that design and manage the sustainable management and utilization of water resources in urban areas to rebuild the degradation of nature through urban development. None of the cities in Iran has been studied as a complete network with consideration of all water resources, and no optimization has been done on the allocation of urban water resources. Achieving sustainable development in urban watersheds, requires the development of integrated management models, some of these problems can be solved with using optimum runoff of precipitation in there. The purpose of this research is to investigate how water management in the urban environment and the impact of urban development on the water dynamics and the role of the city's spatial scale and density and their management in urban hydrology. Due to the lack of attention to the engineered water cycle in Iran, in measuring the total city water cycle waste, determining the penetration rate in permeable and impervious urban areas should be among the priorities. It is also important to quantifying the impact of urban areas on climate dynamics in predicting rainfall on a time scale, and should consider the impacts of these events on flood infrastructures, flood risk, and water quality. Keywords: Water Management, Urban Development, Urban Watershed, Sustainable Development

The present study was carried out to assess the seasonal variations of spring water quality of different locations of Kyunja Gad Watershed, District Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand. Total 7 springs water samples were collected from Kyunja Gad Watershed. Spring water samples collected in winter, pre-monsoon, monsoon and post-monsoon seasons of the year 2016 were analyzed for various water physico-chemical characteristics, viz. pH, DO, temperature, Turbidity, Electrical conductivity, Total dissolved solids, Chloride, Total hardness, Fluoride, Nitrate, Sulfate and Iron. The analyses was done according to standard methods for water examination and reported based on the WHO prescribed limit for drinking water. The Result showed the variations of the analyzed parameters in water sample as follows: Turbidity 0.01-1.4 NTU; pH 6.2-8.0; DO 5.19-15.24 mg/l; TDS 31-199 mg/l; Electrical conductivity 61.5-397 μs/cm; Total hardness as 20-176 mg/l; Chloride 2.5-28 mg/l; Nitrate 0.5-10.3 mg/l and Iron 0.1-1.2 mg/l respectively. The analyzed physio-chemical parameters of water samples from all the 7 springs were permissible limit of APHA/ WHO/ BIS 10500: 2012 water quality guidelines.

- by J. Makarewicz
- •
- Watershed Management
- by Alaine Tess Cabije
- •
- Watershed Management

Within river basins different social, economic, political and physical subsystems interact. When making decisions, policy makers should be aware of such interactions as any new policy will affect more than one subsystem. To determine the adequacy of a specific management policy, an integrated study is needed of a complicated water management system in the basin considering major physical, social, economic and political aspects. The Zayandeh-Rud river basin, in central Iran with a semi-arid climate and large agricultural, industrial and domestic water uses, is an example of a complicated watershed system where the lack of complete knowledge about all the interacting subsystems has led to failure of the policy makers in addressing the water shortage in the basin. Although water shortages occur fairly soon after completion of each new water source, transbasin water diversion is still the major policy of water planners to address ongoing shortages. System dynamics provides a unique framework for integrating the disparate physical, socio-economic and political systems important to watershed management. This approach is used to comprehend the interactions of different drivers of the problem and to convey the experiences, lessons learned, and perceptions gained during the model development process. A simulation model, built based on causal loop diagrams of the problem, shows that transbasin diversion is not the best and only solution to the problem. The results of the model for different scenarios suggest that various options of demand management and population control can be more effective in addressing the water crisis of the basin when combined with transbasin water diversions, increasing water storage capacity and controlling of groundwater withdrawal.

- by Kaveh Madani
- •
- System Dynamics, Climate, Water Resources Management, Multidisciplinary

Cities depend on several watersheds’ ecosystems as the main source of ecosystem services for
urban populations; however, this connection is not visible to decision-makers and citizens. The current
governance structures do not contemplate the integrated management of the urban-rural territory by
watershed; they establish few spaces for citizen participation, and limit the transparency of information.
We use qualitative methods to analyze the work of the Civil Society Organization (CSO) in seven
urbanized watersheds in Mexico, located under different socio-environmental conditions, to incorporate
the watershed cities’ management processes through new spaces of collaborative governance. Through
environmental education campaigns, the CSOs raised awareness of the importance of watershed
ecosystems to provide water for cities, explored the willingness to pay for their conservation, and the
perception of the work of municipal water utilities. By promoting alliances between social sectors, the
private sector, communities, and different levels of government, the CSOs built new institutions to
increase the collaborative decisions and facilitate public participation, such as Watershed Committees,
Citizen Observatories for Water and Consultative Councils. The incorporation of cities and citizens
in the conservation of environmental services of the watershed was promoted through payment for
environmental services programs. These processes of building new forms of governance are not
linear. They depend on the convening and organizational capacity of the CSOs, the political will of the
municipalities and states, as well as the socioeconomic conditions of citizens. In general, our results
suggest that CSOs allow the formation of alliances that strengthen collaborations among stakeholders
at different scales, increase government transparency and accountability, and provide a bridge of trust
between upstream and downstream users in the watersheds.

- by Helena Cotler and +2
- •
- Environmental Policy and Governance, Watershed Management, Sustainable Cities
- by Kelly Vodden
- •
- Complex Adaptive Systems, Watershed Management