Assessing the Water-Resources Potential for a Watershed using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model
As demand for water increases across the world, the availability of freshwater in many regions is likely to decrease due to population growth, industrialization, land use and climate change. Climate change due to the greenhouse effect plays a vital role in the availability of freshwater and is just one of the pressures facing water resources today. Nearly all of the climate change projections indicate substantial decreases in water availability. Uncertainties due to climate change and population growth have created a critical situation for many cities. Quantifying the water resources of an urban or a rural area is essential for providing the strategic information needed for long-term planning of the area’s water security. Conventional water-resource planning and management fail to serve the purpose of estimation of water resources in a holistic way that would inform the planners and engineers to allocate water resources for various activities. Therefore appropriate estimation of the water resources is one of the critical aspects for the water budgeting. SWAT is one of the established hydrological tools to estimate the water resources for the watershed. The present study intends to undertake the modelling studies using SWAT tool for estimation of potential water resources in a watershed/sub-basing in Gujarat. The outcome of the study will help to make an informed decision on the water budgeting of water resources for various uses. Finally, the thesis will verify the amount of water used for various purposes and will derive any gap/exceed in the water usage than the total available water with respect to available Government data.
