Faculty Publications

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Conjunctive use in India's Varada River Basin
(American Water Works Association cs-journals@wiley.com, 2009) Ramesh, H.; Mahesha, A.
The use of groundwater in conjunction with surface water resources has gained prominence in regions experiencing scarce or uneven distribution of water. In the Varada River Basin in Karnataka, India, for example, an optimization model was developed for the conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater resources because of the increasing demand on agricultural and domestic sectors of this area's water supply. Monsoon rains, which occur only six months a year, predominantly control the basin's agricultural activities. However, the area has an immense need for efficient use of available water resources during the rest of the year. The model, based on linear programming, optimizes the allocation of groundwater and surface water subject to hydraulic and stream flow constraints. The model incorporates policy scenarios that add to the sustainability of the system. The developed conjunctive-use model is simple but effective in computing the optimal use of the Varada basin's water resources.
Assessment of hydropower potential in Nethravathi river basin using SWAT model
(CAFET INNOVA Technical Society cafetinnova@gmail.com 1-2-18/103, Mohini Mansion, Gagan Mahal Road, Domalguda, Hyderabad 500029, 2015) Babar, S.; Shobhita, M.P.; Ramesh, H.
Hydropower plants have the advantage of producing renewable and clean power, the renewable and reliable energy source that serves national environmental and energy policy objectives. Therefore, the development of hydropower plant and improvements of water management have essential in contributing to sustainable growth and energy production in developing countries like India. The present study is concerned with the development of methodology and assessment of hydropower potential in the Nethravathi River basin with the help of Remote Sensing and GIS. The drainage area covers about 3190 km2 at Bantwal gauging point, and most of the land cover of the basin is dominated by forest. The basin was divided into six sub-basins based on hydrology and topography using GIS tools. The climate over the basin is coastal humid tropical and receives an average annual rainfall of about 4000 mm. sub-basin discharges were estimated using the Soil Conservation Services (SCS) curve number method. To ensure the total discharge from six sub-basins computed from SCS curve number method, the flows were routed and simulated at the gauging location using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). SWAT model was calibrated for monthly time steps from 1998–2001, and validated for 2002–2003. Flow-duration curves (FDC) were generated for each sub-basin to assess the dependable yield. The results have shown a good agreement between observed and the simulated flows. The available discharge at 75%, 80% and 90% of time for each sub-basin were extracted from the FDC. This result were used to calculate the hydropower potential in all the six sub-basins at Q75, Q80 and Q90, by integrating thematic layers using ArcSWAT. © 2015 CAFET-INNOVA TECHNICAL SOCIETY. All rights reserved.
Streamflow response to land use-land cover change over the Nethravathi River Basin, India
(American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), 2015) Babar, S.; Ramesh, H.
Land use-land cover change (LULC) has considerable impacts on hydrologic response at the watershed level. Quantitative assessment of LULC impacts on runoff generations is vital for water resources development. The soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) model was used to study the effect of LULC change on streamflows. In addition to this, the present study proposed a newly developed flow-routing model called runoff coefficient routing model (RCRM). This new model is simple and requires limited data, such as precipitation, LULC and streamflows as compared to other models, which require meteorological and many more input data. The Nethravathi River basin was selected for testing the RCRM model with the SWAT model to study land use-land cover change on streamflows. The SWAT model and RCRM model have been calibrated for 2001-2005 and validated for 2006-2009 daily data. Results have shown that the simulated streams are well correlated with observed streamflows with a coefficient of correlation (R2) equal to 0.82 in calibration and 0.68 in validation period. Whereas, the RCRM model results have shown R2 of 0.81 and 0.66 in the calibration and validation period. Finally, the SWAT and RCRM results were compared. It is observed that the results of the RCRM model have shown a good agreement with SWAT model results of R2 equal to 0.99 and 0.98, respectively, in the calibration and validation period. The sensitivity analysis was also carried out based on Latin hypercube one factor-at-a-time (LH-OAT) method using the SWAT model and found 11 sensitive parameters out of 28 parameters. Model performance was carried out using the Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficient (NSE) and found 0.81 for calibration and 0.62 for the validation period in the SWAT model. RCRM has NSE of 0.79 and 0.63. The response of the streamflows for the year 2013 was simulated from the calibrated model. The results showed that the observed streamflows have shown good correlation with simulated streamflows with R2 values of 0.86 and NSE of 0.81. From the results, it is concluded that the runoff shows early response in the year 2013 compared to the year 2003. This is mainly due to changes in LULC, which shows the conversion of forest to agricultural area and increase in built-up area from 2003 to 2013. The effect of LULC change on the hydrological model parameters were calculated and observed a decrease in evapotranspiration (ET) of about 4.5%, an increase in runoff of about 0.9%, and an increase in groundwater of about 1.12%. In conclusion, the proposed RCRM in the present study simulates streamflows at par with the SWAT model with only few input data. Hence, the newly developed RCRM model would be used to study streamflows responses to LULC changes. © 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.

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