ASSESSMENT OF WATER AVAILABILITY IN BETWA RIVER BASIN, INDIA USING SWAT.

Abstract

In the current investigation, the study area is portrayed exactly into catchments and sub catchments utilizing Arc-SWAT, which is an exceptionally advantageous by using Arc GIS. Numerous Thematic maps were evolved by using GIS, which were extremely helpful contribution to the investigation. The topical guide created from variety of viewpoints of the catchment gives a perspective on the watershed and were utilized for hydrological examination of Betwa basin situated in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh states of India. Morphometric study of the Betwa river has been done to comprehend the spatial varieties in morphometric boundaries and assess hydrological, land and geological qualities by investigating digital elevation model. The Betwa River recognized as the 6th order drainage basin, 70 % stream number happened in the first order streams. Mean stream length found to be 5.91 shows medium slope with less gradients in the stream network.

The natural resource profile of the Betwa river basin (43,808 km2), was studied by classifying agricultural land, forest land, degraded and waste lands, water bodies present in the watershed area by land use land cover classification. Soil classification and seasonal water balance analysis was carried out to quantify various components of the hydrological cycle using SWAT model for the Betwa river. The river basin is mainly agricultural dominated basin which covers agricultural generic land of an area of 28167 km2 (64 % of the basin area) followed by forest area of 5806 km2 (13 % coverage), Range shrub land area of 3724 km2 (8.50 % coverage), agricultural crop land of 2493 km2 (5.69 % coverage), water bodies consist of various dams and reservoirs area of 1300 km2 (2.97 % coverage), urban land of 344.85 km2 (0.79% coverage) and wetland area of 4.23 km2 (0.01 % coverage). Similarly from soil classification it was found that the Betwa river basin consists of 6 soil groups. Sandy Clay loam soil group consists of an area of 23099.07 km2 (52.72 % of basin area) jointly followed by clay loam soil of an area of 16226.62 km2 (37.04 % of coverage) and loam soil of an area of 3239.58 km2 (7.39 % of the study area) and clay soil of an area of 912.57 km2 (2.08 % of coverage) and sandy soil of an area of 330.91 km2 (0.76 % of coverage).Among them, Clayey Soil and Loam Soil are ordered as profoundly delicate to surface soil disintegration.