Use Of A Distributed Catchment Model To
Assess Hydrologic Modifications In The
Upper Ganges Basin
Author(s)
L. Bharati, V. Smakhtin, P. Jayakody, N. Kaushal & P. Gurung
Abstract
Allocation of river water to cities, industries and agriculture has been a common
practice in river basin planning and management. It is now widely accepted that
water also needs to be allocated for aquatic environments – alongside the
demands of other users. Discharge data are a pre-requisite for calculating such
environmental demands – Environmental Flows (EF) – regardless of the EF
assessment method used. This paper describes the application of a distributed
hydrological model (SWAT) to simulate discharges, which were then used for
EF assessment in the Upper Ganges River in India (total area: 87000 km2). The
EF assessment was done using a multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder approach
(Building Blocks methodology). The EF method involved several stakeholder
workshops with various expert groups and extensive field studies. This is the
first time that a comprehensive EF assessment has been done in India. The
characteristic feature of the study is that cultural and religious water demands
were also incorporated into the assessment of EF requirements as the
conservation of the river’s spiritual traits were recognized by the stakeholders as
being as important as the maintenance of its ecological integrity.
The assessment resulted in EF requirements ranging from 72% of Mean Annual
Runoff (MAR) in the upper stretches to 45% of (MAR) in the lower stretches,
which is coherent with the ecological and spiritual status of the reaches.
Keywords: Ganges Basin, hydrological modeling, environmental flows
assessment.
Keywords
Ganges Basin, hydrological modeling, environmental flowsassessment
Related Book
Other papers in this volume
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