Integrated Planning and Management of Water Resources in Sheonath River Basin of Chhattisgarh State India

Abstract

Chhattisgarh State of India is bestowed with rich water resources, and about 80% of the rainfall occurs during four monsoon months from June to September. Because of time and spatial variability of rainfall, a number of water storages have been constructed to tap the available water so that it can be utilized in accordance with requirement. Sheonath River Basin, a sub-basin of Mahanadi river, comprises of 26 number of different command areas. Out of the total agriculture zone of 22,702 km2, only 11,903 km2 is irrigated through networks of canal, which is only 52% of the total agriculture area. The basic objective of this study is to plan a suitable number of water storage sites for achieving maximum possible irrigation for the remaining 48% of the agriculture area which is not falling under the command area of the existing schemes. In order to assess the suitable number sites, GIS-based multi-criteria evaluation method analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to determine the percentage importance of the parameters used in the identification of suitable sites for water storage in accordance with the guidelines laid by integrated mission for sustainable development (IMSD) (1995). Six numbers of suitable sites are assessed using an integrated approach of GIS and AHP, situated outside the existing command area. These sites are assessed for water storage capacity at possible heights as per the topographical conditions. Digital elevation model (DEM) is used to determine the maximum water surface area as well as the potential capacity at maximum elevation. All these six reservoirs have potential of about 524.20 million cubic meters (MCM). This amount of storage is sufficient for fulfilling the needs of irrigation for the agriculture land falling outside the existing command area of the basin. In the present study, Hydrologic Engineering Centre-Hydrologic Modelling System (HEC-HMS) is used for estimating the availability of water in the basin. The model uses Soil Conservation Services Curve Number (SCS-CN) method to estimate the loss from the basin.