Prediction of land use changes based on land change modeler and attribution of changes in the water balance of Ganga basin to land use change using the SWAT model

Conflicts between increasing irrigated agricultural area, commercial crops, shifting cultivation and ever increasing domestic and industrial demand has already been a cause of tension in the society over water in the Ganga River Basin, India. For the development of sustainable water resource strategies, it is essential to establish interaction between landuse changes and local hydrology through proper assessment. Precisely, seeing how change in each LULC affects hydrologic regimes, or conversely evaluating which LULC shall be appropriate for the local hydrological regime can help decision makers to incorporate in the policy instruments. In this study, we assess hydrologic regimes of the Ganga River basin with landuse change. Catchment hydrologic responses were simulated using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT). Meteorological data from IMD of 0.25°×0.25° spatial resolution were taken as the climate inputs. Simulated stream flow was compared at different gauge stations distributed across the Gang basin and its tributaries. Urbanization was the topmost contributor to the increase in surface runoff and water yield. While, increased irrigation demands was the dominant contributor to the water consumption and also added to the increased evapotranspiration. In addition scenarios have been generated to study the impact of landuse change on various components of hydrology including groundwater recharge, with different cropping patterns and increased irrigation efficiency to determine various mitigation strategies that can be adopted. This study can be important tool in quantifying the changes in hydrological components in response to changes made in landuse in especially basins undergoing rapid commercialization. This shall provide substantive information to the decision makers required to develop ameliorative strategies. Keywords: Landuse and Landcover change, Hydrologic model, Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), Urbanization, Ganga River, Watershed hydrology.