A Participatory Water Management Tool for the Determination of Groundwater Recharge

Agriculture currently accounts for 70% of global water consumption, resulting in excessive groundwater pumping that surpasses the rate of groundwater renewal in many places. There is a pressing need for farmers to have a way to monitor water resources, so that they can manage and utilize water more sustainably to mitigate hardship and sustain water-related livelihoods. One of the most promising methods for quantifying groundwater supplies is the Chloride Mass Balance (CMB) approach. Although chloride can be easily quantified with ion chromatography in a laboratory, its application in developing countries remains a logistical challenge. The high costs and complexity associated with the current methodology limits its application in practice, since it requires highly specialized personnel to make advanced measurements and interpretations. In an effort to mitigate these caveats and simplify the CMB methodology such that spatial and temporal resolution can increase, this study exemplifies the use of Total Dissolved Solutes (TDS) and Electrical Conductivity (EC) meters as surrogates for ion chromatography as an extension of an on-going participatory watershed monitoring program in the Jaisamand Lake Basin, a UNESCO G-WADI pilot basin located in Rajasthan, India. Weekly EC measurements collected from 20 farmers within the Gangeshwar Watershed and Household data collection were collected in 2012 to elucidate well-well scale differences in groundwater recharge.