Impact of Land-use/cover Changes on Groundwater Level Dynamics in Semi-Arid Region of India

By : Prabuddh Kumar Mishra

Page No: 152-173

Abstract
A large-scale land transformation after the green revolution (modernization of Agriculture with the consumptive use of high yielding variety (HYV) seeds, fertilizers and pesticides complemented with irrigation facilities to increase the food production of India during the 1960s) has altered the hydrological cycle and water balance in the semi-arid region of southern Haryana. In this context, this paper analyzes the impact of land-use/cover changes and intensive agricultural practices on the groundwater status in the area from 1980 to 2015. Supervised classification (maximum likelihood technique) has been used to perform change detection, whilst the Groundwater Development Index and change detection method have been used for the computation of groundwater storage change. The result indicates that the area under crops has decreased from 602611 km2 to 591589 km2, while an unprecedented growth of (97.80%) has been witnessed in the built-up area in all these years. The water table has fallen from 9.27mbgl (meters below ground level) in 1980 to 25.58 mbgl in 2015, at the rate of 0.4m per year as the water-efficient crops such as wheat, sugarcane, and paddy have been replaced by less water-consuming crops such as mustered, jowar, bajra, maize, and gram. Groundwater development has exceeded 100% of the natural replenishment level in the Gurgaon and Palwal districts and lies in the 'Over-exploited' category. Hence, it is needed to monitor the land use/cover changes and groundwater withdrawals and increase the body of quantitative evidence to check the pressure of the growing human population and climate change on water resources in the region.

Authors :
Munesh Kumari : Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India.
Suresh Chand Rai : Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. 
Prabuddh Kumar Mishra : Department of Geography, Shivaji College, University of Delhi, New Delhi, India.
 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/ATNAGI.2023.43.01.11