Faculty Publications
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Item Challenges and opportunities for coastal reservoir development in India(Elsevier, 2020) Sitharam, T.G.; Kolathayar, S.In India, presently 320 million people remain in the water-starved parts of the country, and according to the United Nations, 840 million people are expected to be water-starved in India by 2050. Although there has been no significant change in India’s rainfall pattern, the number of areas under drought in India is increasing every year. Increase in population is one of the reasons for water scarcity, but inefficient management of the precipitation received stands as the major cause. Although extreme rainfall events are significantly increasing, there is a spatial nonuniformity in the rainfall events that occur. This makes it difficult to preplan large-scale water storage at different locations. Solution to India’s water problem lies in conserving the abundant monsoon water bounty by storing it in coastal reservoirs for future use. This paper focuses on the challenges and opportunities in India for storing river floodwaters in coastal reservoir. The paper also presents the concept of Sarovar Mala, a chain of coastal reservoirs, an innovative concept that has the potential to ensure water availability to India throughout the year. © 2020 Elsevier Inc.Item Changes in hydrology and coastal sedimentation by dams—a case study(2009) Abdu Rahiman, K.U.; Dwarakish, G.S.; Kawal, B.M.The sustainability of coasts depends on intermittent deliveries of sediments from rivers and streams. This fluvial sediment delivery has been greatly reduced by dams, which prevent the sediment from reaching the coast and nourishing the beaches naturally. Dams alter the downstream flow system of rivers. River hydrology were mainly affected by dams, through changes in the frequency, magnitude and timing of flows, ultimately creating a hydrologic system differing significantly from the pre- impoundment natural flow system. This paper describes the effects of 15 dams in Periyar river basin, Kerala, on river hydrology and sedimentation in Cochin coast. Hydrological, river sedimentation and reservoir sedimentation analyses of Periyar river were carried out using rainfall, discharge and sediment load data collected from India Meteorological Department (IMD), Central Water Commission (CWC) and Kerala State Electricity Board (KSEB). The results show that the net runoff of Periyar river is reduced by 41 % mainly because of the impoundment of dams. The net sediment transport of Periyar river towards Cochin coast during the 25 year period was also estimated. The total quantity of sediment trapped in all the reservoirs in Periyar river was calculated, by using Brune's curves. The results showed a distinct reduction in sediment load in Periyar river mainly due to the interference of dams. The total amount of sediment trapped in all the reservoirs in Periyar river up to 2006 is estimated as 205 million tons, which is nearly 27 times the total sediment load transported by Periyar river towards Cochin coast (7.545 million tons), during the 25 year period (1978 to 2002). © 2009 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.Item Land use scenario analysis and prediction of runoff using SCS-CN method: A case study from the Gudgudi tank, Haveri district, Karnataka, India(2011) Bhagwat, N.B.; Shetty, A.; Hegde, V.S.Runoff from the Gudgudi tank catchment (209 ha) near Hangal in the Northern Karnataka is estimated employing Soil Conservation Services(SCS) model based on the hydrological data and land use/ land cover data. Rainfall measured for 2006 using a tipping bucket indicated annual rainfall of 887.7mm in the tank catchment. Textural characteristics of the soil indicate sandy-clayey type which corresponds to hydrological soil group "C and D". Average Soil infiltration rate of 0.18 cm/hour for the forest-land and 0.21 cm/hour for agriculture land has been observed. Weighted curve number is arrived based on the antecedent moisture conditions, and runoff is estimated for the existing land-use. Areastorage curve is constructed using the tank bed contours. Considering the hypothetical changes in the agriculture and forest area coverage, optimum conditions for maximizing the runoff and storage in the tank is arrived. The analysis suggests land use pattern of 15% of forest cover and 85% of agriculture land coverage in this region provide maximum runoff and storage in the tank for sustainable development. © 2011 CAFET-INNOVA TECHNICAL SOCIETY.Item 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.Item Hydrological effects of land use /land cover changes on stream flow at Gilgel Abay River Basin, Upper Blue Nile, Ethiopia(CAFET INNOVA Technical Society 1-2-18/103, Mohini Mansion, Gagan Mahal Road, Domalguda, Hyderabad 500029, 2016) Mulu, A.; Dwarakish, G.S.Water is the most important resource for the survival of living things and it is the most essential resource associated with land use/ land cover (LU/LC) changes. Therefore, it is very important to make evaluations of the expected impact on the hydrology and water resources due to expected changes. The main objective of this study is to assess the hydrological effect of land use/ land cover changes on stream flow at GilgelAbay river basin using Precipitation Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) model. System inputs are daily time-series values of precipitation, minimum and maximum air temperature, and parameter files which are generated from GIS Weasel. To identify effect of changes in LU/LC, vegetation type and vegetation density on stream flow, LU/LC, vegetation type and vegetation density data from 1990-2000 and 2001-2010 years were considered. This different period LU/LC, vegetation type and vegetation density with soil data and DEM were given to GIS Weasel to generate different parameters for PRMS model. These generated parameters together with time series data (daily minimum and maximum air temperature, daily precipitation and daily stream flow) feed to PRMS model to simulate stream flow for the years 1993-2000 and 2001-2008. From the time series data, climate changes (daily maximum and minimum temperature and daily precipitations) were kept the same as baseline period (1993-2000). The stream flow of 2001-2008 compared with baseline period (1993-2000) and the effect of LU/LC, vegetation type and vegetation density was identified using calibrated and simulated PRMS model. Hence, as LU/LC, vegetation type and vegetation density changed from 1993-2000 period to 2001-2010 period, stream flow increased from 7.8% (128.4 Mm3) to 25.3% (432 Mm3) and ET decreased from 4.2% (75 Mm3) to 20% (524 Mm3) from baseline period. For the whole simulation periods (2001-2008) stream flow increased by 10.9% (784 Mm3), but ET decreased 6.7% (43 Mm3) related to baseline periods. © 2016 CAFET-INNOVA TECHNICAL SOCIETY. All rights reserved.Item Impacts of climate change on varied River-Flow regimes of southern india(American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) onlinejls@asce.org, 2017) Mudbhatkal, A.; Raikar, R.V.; Venkatesh, B.; Mahesha, A.This paper assesses the possible impact of climate change on the hydrology of the subhumid and perhumid river regimes originating from the western mountain range (Western Ghats) of India. The modified Mann-Kendall test evaluates the trend of observed data (1975-2004) and RCP 4.5 data (2006-2070) of climatic variables. The results indicate a decreasing trend for annual rainfall over the Malaprabha River catchment (26 mm per year at the 5% significance level), whereas no trend is observed over the Netravathi River catchment at the 10% level. Indian southwestern monsoon rainfall shows a decreasing trend from 84 to 80% of total rainfall in the Malaprabha River catchment and from 80 to 77% in the Netravathi River catchment. Summer rains are found to be increasing in the Malaprabha River catchment (3-4.5% of total rainfall), whereas there is no significant trend for the Netravathi River catchment. Furthermore, the postmonsoon rainfall also shows a significant increase in the Malaprabha catchment (40 mm per decade at the 5% significance level) and the Netravathi catchment (30 mm per decade at the 10% significance level). The Netravathi River shows a decreasing trend for annual flow (0.22 Mm3 per year at the 10% significance level). However, for both catchments the temperature is found to be increasing by 0.2-0.8°C per decade. The soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) model is used to simulate the river catchments and exhibits a Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency of 0.831 and 0.857 for the Malaprabha and Netravathi River catchments, respectively. In addition, a decreasing trend in the high flow is estimated for Netravathi, whereas the trend is increasing for Malaprabha. Thus the impacts of climate change over the Western Ghats are very evident, but the flow of each river responds differently. © 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.Item Bias correction methods for hydrologic impact studies over India's Western Ghat basins(American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) onlinejls@asce.org, 2018) Mudbhatkal, A.; Mahesha, M.The regional climate models (RCMs) used in the analysis of the impact of climate variables on the hydrology of river basins needs appropriate preprocessing (bias correction) to represent and reproduce future climate with a fair degree of accuracy. The performance of bias corrections methods was assessed in this investigation on the basis of their ability to minimize error on climate variables and streamflow. This work compares the performance of five bias correction methods applied for precipitation and four methods for temperature in modeling the hydrology of the river catchments of theWestern Ghats of India. TheWestern Ghats are a mountainous forest range along the entire west coast of India that plays a major role in the distribution of Indian monsoon rains. Simulations were used to evaluate the performance of the bias correction methods. Using raw RCM, bias corrected precipitation and temperature time series, streamflows were estimated by the soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) hydrological model. The results indicated that the raw RCM-simulated precipitation was biased by 42% and the temperature was biased by 12% across the catchments investigated. Subsequently, a bias of 65% was found in the streamflow. The performance of the delta change correction method was consistently better for precipitation (with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency, NSE > 0.75 for 5 catchments) and temperature (NSE = 1) compared with other methods. Good performance was observed between the observed and bias corrected streamflow (daily time scale) for the catchments Purna (NSE = 0.97), Ulhas (NSE = 0.64), Aghanashini (NSE = 0.82), Netravathi (NSE = 0.89), and Chaliyar (NSE = 0.90); low performance with an NSE of 0.3 was observed for the catchments Kajvi and Vamanapuram. The methods failed for Malaprabha and Tunga catchments. The results indicate that the delta change correction method performed best in analyzing the hydrological impact of climate variables on the windward side of Western Ghats of India. © 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.Item Regional climate trends and topographic influence over the Western Ghat catchments of India(John Wiley and Sons Ltd vgorayska@wiley.com Southern Gate Chichester, West Sussex PO19 8SQ, 2018) Mudbhatkal, A.; Mahesha, M.This study investigates the role of elevation stratification and climate change on the hydrology of Western Ghat catchments during the period from 1951 to 2013 using gridded data. The trend analysis of rainfall and temperature was conducted using the Mann–Kendall trend test, and the hydrological modelling of the rivers was conducted using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model. To characterize the spatial distribution of rainfall and streamflow based on elevation stratification, contemporary rainfall zones were delineated and the response of each zone was evaluated. The results indicated that the maximum rainfall occurs at certain distance on the windward side from the crest of the Western Ghats. On the leeward side (eastern plateau), the rainfall is maximum at crest (Western Ghats) and decreases with distance. The rivers in the southern portion of the Western Ghats of India were highly vulnerable to changing climate followed by the central portion. The annual and monsoon rainfall in the southern river decreased at 0.43 and 0.30% decade?1 (1% significance level), respectively. The summer rainfall in the river of the central portion (Netravathi River) decreased at 0.44% decade?1. The annual air temperature of the southern river catchment (Vamanapuram) increased at the rate of 0.12 °C decade?1 (at 0.1% significance level), and the air temperature of the central rivers increased at the rate of 0.09, 0.08, and 0.07 °C (0.1% significance level), respectively. The streamflow response of the southern and central rivers was discernible as the monsoon flow decreased at 37% decade?1 (0.1% significance level) in the southern river and 10% decade?1 (5% significance level) in the central river. Interestingly, the pristine Aghanashini River demonstrated resilience to climate change with an increase in annual rainfall and streamflow at 115 mm decade?1 (5% significance level) and 0.71 Mm3 decade?1 (0.1% significance level), respectively. © 2017 Royal Meteorological SocietyItem Improved vegetation parameterization for hydrological model and assessment of land cover change impacts on flow regime of the Upper Bhima basin, India(Springer International Publishing kasia@cesj.com, 2018) Mohaideen, M.M.D.; Varija, K.This study investigates the potential and applicability of variable infiltration capacity (VIC) hydrological model to simulate different hydrological components of the Upper Bhima basin under two different Land Use Land Cover (LULC) (the year 2000 and 2010) conditions. The total drainage area of the basin was discretized into 1694 grids of about 5.5 km by 5.5 km: accordingly the model parameters were calibrated at each grid level. Vegetation parameters for the model were prepared using temporal profile of Leaf Area Index (LAI) from Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer and LULC. This practice provides a methodological framework for the improved vegetation parameterization along with region-specific condition for the model simulation. The calibrated and validated model was run using the two LULC conditions separately with the same observed meteorological forcing (1996–2001) and soil data. The change in LULC has resulted to an increase in the average annual evapotranspiration over the basin by 7.8%, while the average annual surface runoff and baseflow decreased by 18.86 and 5.83%, respectively. The variability in hydrological components and the spatial variation of each component attributed to LULC were assessed at the basin grid level. It was observed that 80% of the basin grids showed an increase in evapotranspiration (ET) (maximum of 292 mm). While the majority of the grids showed a decrease in surface runoff and baseflow, some of the grids showed an increase (i.e. 21 and 15% of total grids—surface runoff and baseflow, respectively). © 2018, Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences & Polish Academy of Sciences.Item Evaluation of satellite precipitation products in simulating streamflow in a humid tropical catchment of india using a semi-distributed hydrological model(MDPI, 2020) Sharannya, T.M.; Al-Ansari, N.; Deb Barma, S.; Mahesha, M.Precipitation obtained from rain gauges is an essential input for hydrological modelling. It is often sparse in highly topographically varying terrain, exhibiting a certain amount of uncertainty in hydrological modelling. Hence, satellite rainfall estimates have been used as an alternative or as a supplement to station observations. In this study, an attempt was made to evaluate the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS), employing a semi-distributed hydrological model, i.e., Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), for simulating streamflow and validating them against the flows generated by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) rainfall dataset in the Gurupura river catchment of India. Distinct testing scenarios for simulating streamflow were made to check the suitability of these satellite precipitation data. The TRMM was able to better estimate rainfall than CHIRPS after performing categorical and continuous statistical results with respect to IMD rainfall data. While comparing the performance of model simulations, the IMD rainfall-driven streamflow emerged as the best followed by the TRMM, CHIRPS-0.05, and CHIRPS-0.25. The coefficient of determination (R2), Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE), and percent bias (PBIAS) were in the range 0.63 to 0.86, 0.62 to 0.86, and ?14.98 to 0.87, respectively. Further, an attempt was made to examine the spatial distribution of key hydrological signature, i.e., flow duration curve (FDC) in the 30–95 percentile range of non-exceedance probability. It was observed that TRMM underestimated the flow for agricultural water availability corresponding to 30 percent, even though it showed a good performance compared to the other satellite rainfall-driven model outputs. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.