News and Articles

Sustainability – this word has assumed tremendous importance today, in the context of “development”. The advancement of human civilization in terms of technology, economics and life-style is turning out to be lop-sided. It is being realized that the sheer amount of wastes generated by the present population, is becoming more and more unmanageable with each passing day.

The study attempts to compile and evaluate the status of metal pollution assessment through aquatic sediments in rivers and lakes. The introduction of metallic pollutants into a river, whether it is natural (erosion from its drainage basin) or artificial (anthropogenic), can occur in dissolved or particulate form.

The study deals with adsorption of lead and zinc ions on the bed sediments of river Kali in western Uttar Pradesh. Adsorption is one of the most important processes in water quality control, which influences the transport of pollutants in aquatic environment.

In this report, a conceptual model is proposed and described for calculation of streamflow runoff arising from rainfall, snowmelt and glacier melt for the Himalayan basins.  The simple structure of the model is designed keeping in view the sparse network, the availability of data and topography of the Himalayan basins. The model is based on the area-elevation characteristics of the watershed and utilizes the relationships describing the temperature lapse rates and orographic precipitation distribution.

The methods of pump test analysis reviewed in this report has been classified as traditional, computer based and new graphical. Quantitative data on hydraulic characteristics of aquifers including transmissivity and storativity are essential to the understanding and solution of aquifer problems and the proper evaluation and utilization of groundwater resources.

The report is an attempt to compile the procedures for systematic processing of rainfall data. The concepts of rainfall data processing have been discussed. It provides computer programs that are meant for processing and analysis of rainfall data collected from various sources. Different well documented computer programs, their description with input specifications and test input are given in the report.

The study looks at soil moisture movement and recharge to groundwater using nuclear methods like tritium tagging. It estimates the recharge to groundwater due to monsoon rain and irrigation through the unsaturated porous media in case of cultivated and uncultivated fields.

The study demonstrates Geographic Information Systems (GIS) based methodology for identification of sediment source areas and prediction of storm sediment yield for small watersheds. The Nagwa watershed in Bihar was discretized in to 50m grid cells using Integrated Land and Water Information Systems (ILWIS) GIS package, and unique drainage directions were obtained using GIS analysis. Also, a threshold channel network was generated from Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of the watershed. Actual observed drainage and generated drainage networks were superimposed and were found identical.

The study carries out sediment yield estimation for the Shakkar catchment of the Narmada river in Madhya Pradesh and successfully implements a methodology for prioritization using Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and image processing on ERDAS and ILWIS software.

The study deals with the estimation of hydrological soil parameters of the doab between Sher, Umar river and Bargi left bank canal in Narsinghpur district of Madhya Pradesh. The soil properties determined are soil texture, soil moisture characteristic curves and saturated hydraulic conductivity.