Delineation of potential water harvesting site for agriculture water planning in Betwa basin of India using geospatial and analytical hierarchical process technique

Abstract

World is facing acute water scarcity owing to growing freshwater demand, rainfall aberrations and miserable management of water resources. Selection of site for water harvesting structure is crucial for water management in basin. SWAT and AHP techniques applied for decision making at HRU level. AHP technique was used for delineation of sites using soil type, slope, runoff ratio and land use land cover criteria. Model R 2 ranged from 0.85 to 0.92, NSE ranged from 0.85 to 0.92, RSR ranged from 0.28 to 0.38 and PBIAS ranged from −14.68 to 0.79 for calibration while R 2 ranged from 0.68 to 0.80, NSE ranged from 0.70 to 0.81, RSR ranged from 0.30 to 0.40 and PBIAS ranged from −12.7 to 0.57 for validation. upper region of basin has the highest potential of water harvesting, which can be managed efficiently by specific water harvesting structure. The tools and techniques can be adopted worldwide, for water resource planning at HRU level.