Author : N. Lakshmi Narayana 1
Date of Publication :10th August 2017
Abstract: The ancient civilizations flourished along the banks of rivers where water was freely available. As the population grew man had to move away from rivers and for needs of water, had to search for solutions like storing of rain water (or) surface runoff. Thus, emerged the practice of water harvesting, a new word for an ancient system. Increasing needs for water, putting a high strain on the available water resources automatically leads to the conservation of water and water resources. In a region where the rainfall is low and scanty, it became all the more important to save every drop of it. Scientists and technologists are carrying out experiments all over the world to obtain water by cloud seeding, desalination and various artificial means, still Still shortage of water is a perpetual phenomenon throughout the world, particularly in India, and more so in the State of Andhra Pradesh. Getting water by the above mentioned means will only be a distant possibility but cannot be a permanent solution. Nature is always kind to us but the people are not responding to it in a matching manner. From rain water harvesting, we can save money avoiding the increasing economic and environmental costs associated with purchasing water from the centralized water system. Operating costs are lower than the cost of purchasing water from the centralized water system. The development of an area is totally depend on the ground water, particularly villages. Due to this, the watershed concept has come up and become a boon for the people. Watershed is a drainage area(basic hydrogeological unit) on earth,s surface from which run-off, resulting from precipitation flows past a single point into a large stream, a river, a lake or the ocean. It is marked by an elevated line that forms a division between two areas drained by separate streams, systems or bodies of water. A watershed may be of any size but it must be manageable, hydrogeologically. The comprehensive development of a watershed so as to make productive use of all its natural resources and also protect them is termed as watershed management. One of the important, basic natural resource is rainwater, it moves from upper reaches to lower lands. Retention of rain water along upper reaches for improving moisture for growing greenery is watershed management(Murthy, 1998). Source of moisture is rain water. The present study is concentrated on one of the chief objectives of the watershed management that is rainwater harvesting and recharging. When watershed is properly managed simultaneously for soil and vegetation (Bali, 1978). The good watershed management is no water let out of the area through bunding and total harvesting. Ground water, the major source of rural domestic water requirements in India is depleting fast in many areas due to its large scale withdrawal. To tackle the hazardous de-saturation of aquifer zones and consequent deterioration of ground water quality, there is an urgent need to recharge the groundwater resources through suitable watershed management interventions. In this study, Kosigi which is one of drought prone mandal of Kurnool district was taken up to identify potential zones for groundwater recharge using GIS techniques. There are 26 villages covering an area around 420 km2 predominantly by black cotton soils and nearly flat terrain surface with small isolated hillocks. By considering suitability of terrain surface, soil and its depth; thematic maps such as geomorphology, drainage density, lineament density, and land use / land cover were prepared for Weighted Overlay Analysis (WOA) using ArcGIS 10.2 desktop software. The weights of selected themes were computed using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) method. From the results, the groundwater potential zones with poor (34.76 km2), moderate (227.91 km2), good (117.02km2), very good (36.37 km2), and excellent (5.20 km2) prospective zones were identified.
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