Principles of Water Resources Engineering: Version 2 CE IIT, Kharagpur
Principles of Water Resources Engineering: Version 2 CE IIT, Kharagpur
Principles of Water Resources Engineering: Version 2 CE IIT, Kharagpur
1
Principles of Water
Resources Engineering
Version 2 CE IIT, Kharagpur
Lesson
1
Surface and Ground
Water Resources
Version 2 CE IIT, Kharagpur
Instructional Objectives
After completion of this lesson, the student shall know about
1. Hydrologic cycle and its components
2. Distribution of earth’s water resources
3. Distribution of fresh water on earth
4. Rainfall distribution in India
5. Major river basins of India
6. Land and water resources of India; water development potential
7. Need for development of water resources
1.1.0 Introduction
Water in our planet is available in the atmosphere, the oceans, on land and
within the soil and fractured rock of the earth’s crust Water molecules from one
location to another are driven by the solar energy. Moisture circulates from the
earth into the atmosphere through evaporation and then back into the earth as
precipitation. In going through this process, called the Hydrologic Cycle (Figure
1), water is conserved – that is, it is neither created nor destroyed.
Again, the fresh water distribution is highly uneven, with most of the water locked
in frozen polar ice caps.
The average annual rainfall is estimated as 1170 mm over the country, but
varies significantly from place to place. In the northwest desert of Rajasthan,
the average annual rainfall is lower than 150 mm/year.
The monsoon winds advance over the country either from the Arabian Sea or
from the Bay of Bengal.
1.1.2 Runoff
Runoff is the water that flows across the land surface after a storm event. As
rain falls over land, part of that gets infiltrated the surface as overland flow. As
the flow bears down, it notches out rills and gullies which combine to form
channels. These combine further to form streams and rivers.
The geographical area which contributes to the flow of a river is called a river or a
watershed. The following are the major river basins of our country,
1. Indus (Figure 8)
2. Ganges (Figure 9)
3. Brahmaputra (Figure 10)
1.1.3 Storage
Portion of the precipitation falling on land surface which does not flow out as
runoff gets stored as either as surface water bodies like Lakes, Reservoirs and
Wetlands or as sub-surface water body, usually called Ground water.
Ground water storage is the water infiltrating through the soil cover of a land
surface and traveling further to reach the huge body of water underground. As
mentioned earlier, the amount of ground water storage is much greater than that
of lakes and rivers. However, it is not possible to extract the entire groundwater
by practicable means. It is interesting to note that the groundwater also is in a
state of continuous movement – flowing from regions of higher potential to lower.
The rate of movement, however, is exceptionally small compared to the surface
water movement.
Transpiration is the process by which water molecules leaves the body of a living
plant and escapes to the atmosphere. The water is drawn up by the plant root
system and part of that is lost through the tissues of plant leaf (through
the stomata).
The average annual surface water flows in India has been estimated as 1869
cubic km. This is the utilizable surface water potential in India. But the amount
of water that can be actually put to beneficial use is much less due to severe
limitations posed by Physiography, topography, inter-state issues and the
present state of technology to harness water resources economically. The recent
estimates made by the Central Water Commission, indicate that the water
resources is utilizable through construction of structures is about 690 cubic km
(about 36% of the total). One reason for this vast difference is that not only does
the whole rainfall occur in about four months a year but the spatial and temporal
distribution of rainfall is too uneven due to which the annual average has very
little significance for all practical purposes.
Monsoon rain is the main source of fresh water with 76% of the rainfall occurring
between June and September under the influence of the southwest monsoon.
The average annual precipitation in volumetric terms is 4000 cubic km. The
average annual surface flow out of this is 1869 cubic km, the rest being lost in
infiltration and evaporation.
Utilizable surface water potential: This is the amount of water that can be
purpose fully used, without any wastage to the sea, if water storage and
conveyance structures like dams, barrages, canals, etc. are suitably built at
requisite sites.
Ground water recharge: Some of the water that precipitates, flows on ground
surface or seeps through soil first, then flows laterally and some continues to
percolate deeper into the soil. This body of water will eventually reach a
saturated zone and replenish or recharge groundwater supply. In other words,
the recuperation of groundwater is called the groundwater recharge which is
done to increase the groundwater table elevation. This can be done by many
artificial techniques, say, by constructing a detention dam called a water
spreading dam or a dike, to store the flood waters and allow for subsequent
seepage of water into the soil, so as to increase the groundwater table. It can
also be done by the method of rainwater harvesting in small scale, even at
individual houses. The all India figure for groundwater recharge volume is 418.5
cubic km and the per capita annual volume of groundwater recharge is 412.9
cubic m per person.
6. Per capita Internal Renewable Water Resources: The Per capita annual
average of Internal Renewable Water Resources is the amount of average
IRWR, per capita, per annum. For India, the Per capita Internal
Renewable Water Resources are 1243.6 cubic m.
8. Per capita natural water resources: The present per capita availability of
natural water, per annum is 1820 cubic m, which is likely to fall to 1341
cubic m, by 2025.
9. Annual water withdrawal: The total amount of water withdrawn from the
water resources of the country is termed the annual water withdrawal. In
India, it amounts 500000 to million cubic m.
The above definitions have been provided by courtesy of the following web-site:
http://earthtrends.wri.org/text/theme2vars.htm.
India has sizeable resources of water and a large cultivable land but also a large
and growing population to feed. Erratic distribution of rainfall in time and space
leads to conditions of floods and droughts which may sometimes occur in the
same region in the same year. India has about 16% of the world population as
compared to only 4% of the average annual runoff in the rivers.
With the present population of more than 1000 million, the per capita water
availability comes to about 1170 m3 per person per year. Here, the average does
not reflect the large disparities from region to region in different parts of the
country. Against this background, the problems relating to water resources
development and management have been receiving critical attention of the
Government of India. The country has prepared and adopted a comprehensive
National Water Policy in the year 1987, revised in 2002 with a view to have a
systematic and scientific development of it water resources. This has been dealt
with in Lesson 1.3, “Policies for water resources development”.
Some of the salient features of the National Water Policy (2002) are as follows:
• Since the distribution of water is spatially uneven, for water scarce areas,
local technologies like rain water harvesting in the domestic or community
level has to be implemented.
Along with the inevitable need to raise food production, substantial thrust should
be directed towards water requirement for domestic use. The national agenda for
governance aims to ensure provision of potable water supply to every individual
in about five years time. The National Water Policy (2002) has accorded topmost
water allocation priority to drinking water. Hence, a lot of technological
intervention has to be made in order to implement the decision. But this does not
Note:
Consumptive use: Consumptive use is the amount of water lost in evapo-
transpiration from vegetation and its surrounding land to the atmosphere,
inclusive of the water used by the plants for building their tissues and to carry on
with their metabolic processes. Evapo-transpiration is the total water lost to the
atmosphere from the vegetative cover on the land, along with the water lost from
the surrounding water body or land mass.