Climate and Weather

The report presents infiltration studies of the year 1996-97 for the Bargi Left Bank Canal Command area of Narsinghpur district of Madhya Pradesh. Infiltration studies are mainly addressed to a variety of applications for managing water resources. The design of methods for estimation of flood mitigation and erosion control is often based on estimates of peak discharge derived from prediction of infiltration rate. Water conservation procedures require computation of cumulative infiltration to produce estimates of runoff yield.      

In the present study, an attempt has been made to estimate the soil erosion rate in Malaprabha representative basin by using WEPP model and Universal Soil Loss Equation. Soil erosion and sedimentation are the two important natural processes, which need immediate attention from the scientific community. Two major types of erosion are geological erosion and erosion from human or animal activities.

In this study, an attempt has been made to study the characteristics of short interval rainfall data of the Punpun river basin lying in Bihar-Jharkhand, which has been identified as the representative basin for the NIH- Centre for Flood Management Studies, Patna. The estimation of flood peaks for small catchments is required for water resources planning, flood forecasting, design of various drainage systems, flood control and design of hydraulic structures.

The report presents a methodology for planning of crop and water management practices using weekly rainfall data.

The report presents an estimation of soil erosion and sediment yield for the Karso catchment of Barakar basin in Jharkhand using ANSWERS model. Quantitative assessments of runoff and soil erosion are needed for proper management of land and water resources.

The report discusses the application of deterministic and stochastic approaches in daily rainfall-runoff modeling. The structure of a simple hydrologic water balance type conceptual model of daily time scale is discussed and tested on three catchments of India. Further, the deviations of historic and computed runoff series obtained by using the model, which indicate the error in the fitting of model, is analyzed and used to improve the predicted flows.

A peer paper in Science Magazine focuses on the core of a riverine system, the upstream basin, and its impact on the entire river basin.

The report presents a seasonal rainfall-runoff model developed for the Saurashtra region as well as parts of Narmada river basin. The successful planning and implementation of water resources projects require reliable data on volumetric runoff. It is not feasible to have discharge stations in all the river basins of interest given resource constraints. Therefore, regional rainfall-runoff models are preferred. The utility of such models can be improved if rainfall-runoff models for different regions are developed using data specific to the regions.

The research study attempts to develop a rainfall-runoff model using the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) technique for the Baitarni river in Orissa. A detailed review of the research work in the area of interest revealed that the approach of neural computations was very effective in developing the required model, due to its various advantages. Accordingly, three candidate models based on ANN architecture were developed for the study area, to represent rainfall-runoff transformation.