Geospatial Technology Based Water Management Action Plan for South Forest Division of Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu

Aims: Recent climate change impacts rainfall patterns, increasing wildlife and livestock populations in higher densities, which are likely to aggravate water scarcity in forest areas. A sustainable water management strategy and action plan based on scientific inputs are crucial and need of the hour to resolve the water scarcity problem. Hence, the study aims to prepare an action plan and water management strategy for rangelands of Nilgiris using geospatial tools. Study Design: Field survey was conducted to identify the existing water storage structures and water requirement and ASTER GDEM and GIS were used to prepare the water management strategies for Nilgiris south forest division. Place and Duration of the Study: The study was carried out in Nilgiris south division located in between 760 28' 08’’and 760 44' 08" East longitude and 110 10' 81’’and 110 31' 80" North latitude during 2014-2016. Methodology: The study area has been delineated as macro watersheds, and the altitude, slope, forest cover and drainage lines were extracted from ASTER GDEM for generation thematic maps. Rainfall data for twenty years (1995-2014) was collected and runoff was worked out using runoff coefficient of a different land. A field survey was conducted for identifying the existing water storage structures, spatial occupancy of herbivores, spread and water requirement of invasive species in the Nilgiris south forest division. Results: GIS based thematic maps for slope, contour, area coverage under forest range and macro watershed have been prepared, and water availability and water balance components like runoff and evapotranspiration have been determined. After identifying water availability and water balance according to the site conditions and strategies one Earthen cum masonry embankment, 2 Earthen pond with Major check dam, 2 Masonry embankments, 2 Major check dam 7 Medium check dam 100 Minor check dam, 1 RCC Embankment and 99 gabion check dams in South forest division of Nilgiris. Conclusion: Suitable locations were identified and location specific water harvesting structures have been suggested to store 68844 cum of water.

Effects of Optimized Water Management on the Uptake and Translocation of Cadmium and Arsenic in Oryza Sativa L. In Two Contaminated Soils

Pot experiments were conducted to identify the most efficient water management strategy for reducing Cd and As accumulations and amino acid (AA) synthesis in rice in two soils with different Cd and As contents. A treatment consisting of five days of flooding followed by three days of drainage (F5D3, repeated every eight days) was identified as the most effective treatment for simultaneously decreasing Cd and As in grains, with reductions of grain Cd and As contents of more than 80.0% and 73.1%, respectively, compared with either a drained treatment or a flooded treatment alone; this is probably related to the high efficiency of the F5D3 treatment in reducing dissolved Cd and As according to its minimum “trade-off value”, due to the variations in grain Cd and As contents were significantly correlated with the variations in soil solution Cd (R2 = 0.98) and As (R2 = 0.92, p = 0.0001) concentrations. Additionally, grain Cd content was also significantly related to the organs Cd contents (especially root Cd content, R2 = 0.99) and the root-to-shoot Cd translocation factors (R2 = 0.99), whereas grain As content was significantly related to soil Eh (R2=-0.82, p = 0.003) and pH (R2 = 0.88, p = 0.0008). The AA contents in organs under the F5D3 treatment were lower than those under the Flooded and Drained treatments. These results indicated that the F5D3 treatment was the most effective water management strategy for simultaneously reducing grain Cd and As contents and AA synthesis in rice, which was probably due to there being no need for rice to synthesize abundant AAs to chelate metal ions.

Integrated urban water resources management strategy for a smart city in India

Economic growth of any nation like India depends on growth of cities. In India 31% of total population exists in urban extent. Smart City mission of India was established with the objective to deliver the basic requirements of the citizens in a sustainable manner. Madurai city located at Peninsular India with 1.4 Million population was taken for this study. The objective is to develop an Integrated Urban Water Management Strategy after analysing all the components of Urban Water Cycle such as rainfall, runoff, groundwater and wastewater. The population forecast for 2021 was done for the Local Planning Area (LPA) of 726.34 km2 and the water demand was calculated as 109 Mm3/year. To meet the demand, runoff from the average rainfall was estimated as 393 Mm3/yr using SCS-CN method. The storage capacity in the water bodies to store the Surface water was estimated as 156 Mm3/yr and groundwater recharge potential was estimated as 22 Mm3/yr. The Integrated Urban Water Management strategy developed, shows that there is a huge potential for rainwater storage at the surface level and subsequent recharge through artificial recharge techniques.

Investigation of the Influence of Excess Pumping on Groundwater Salinity in the Gaza Coastal Aquifer (Palestine) Using Three Predicted Future Scenarios

The Gaza coastal aquifer (GCA) is the only source of water for about two million citizens living in Gaza Strip, Palestine. The groundwater quality in GCA has deteriorated rapidly due to many factors. The most crucial factor is the excess pumping due to the high population density. The objective of this article was to evaluate the influence of excess pumping on GCA’s salinity using 10-year predicted future scenarios based on artificial neural networks (ANNs). The ANN-based model was generated to predict the GCA’s salinity for three future scenarios that were designed based on different pumping rates. The results showed that when the pumping rate remains at the present conditions, salinity will increase rapidly in most GCA areas, and the availability of fresh water will decrease in disquieting rates by 2030. Only about 8% of the overall GCA’s area is expected to stay within 500 mg/L of the chloride concentration. Results also indicate that salinity would be improved slightly if the pumping rate is kept at 50% of the current pumping rates while the improvement rate is much faster if the pumping is stopped completely, which is an unfeasible scenario. The results are considered as an urgent call for developing an integrated water management strategy aiming at improving GCA quality by providing other drinking water resources to secure the increasing water demand.

Quantifying snowfall from orographic cloud seeding

<p>Cloud seeding has been used as one water management strategy to overcome the increasing demand for water despite decades of inconclusive results on the efficacy of cloud seeding. In this study snowfall accumulation from glaciogenic cloud seeding is quantified based on snow gauge and radar observations from three days in January 2017, when orographic clouds in the absent of natural precipitation were seeded with silver iodide (AgI) in the Payette basin of Idaho during the Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime Clouds: The Idaho Experiment (SNOWIE). On each day, a seeding aircraft equipped with AgI flares flew back and forth on a straight-line flight track producing a zig-zag pattern representing two to eight lines of clouds visible through enhancements in radar reflectivity. As these seeding lines started to form precipitation, they passed over several snow gauges and through the radar observational domain. For the three cases presented here, precipitation gauges measured increases between 0.05-0.3 mm as precipitation generated by cloud seeding pass over the instruments. A variety of relationships between radar reflectivity factor and liquid equivalent snowfall rate were used to quantify snowfall within the radar observation domain. For the three cases, snowfall occurred within the radar observational domain between 25 -160 min producing a total amount of water generated by cloud seeding ranging from 123,220 to 339,540 m3 using the best-match Ze-S relationship. Uncertainties in radar reflectivity estimated snowfall are provided by considering not only the best-match Ze-S relationship but also an ensemble of Ze-S relationships based on the range of coefficients published from previous studies and then examining the percentile of snowfall estimates based on all of the Ze-S relationships within the ensemble. Considering the interquartile range and 5<sup>th</sup>/95<sup>th</sup> percentiles, uncertainties in total amount of water generated by cloud seeding can range between 20-45% compared to the best-math estimates. These results provide new insights towards understanding how cloud seeding impacts precipitation and its distribution across a region.</p>