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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Surface water loss worry for Ganga plains

Surface water loss worry for Ganga plains

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published Published on Oct 24, 2014   modified Modified on Oct 24, 2014
-The Telegraph

A swathe of land stretching from the Himalayan foothills to the Indo-Gangetic plains has experienced a steady and significant decrease in water stored in lakes, reservoirs, rivers and as groundwater over the past decade, government scientists have said.

Scientists at the National Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting here and their collaborators in other institutions have found that the terrestrial water storage (TWS) - a measure of surface and underground water - has decreased by 1cm per year between 2003 and 2012.

While several earlier studies had shown depletion of groundwater across northern India, the scientists say the new results are important because they indicate a loss of the TWS even in the absence of any significant changes in either rainfall patterns or river water discharges.

"We don't see any significant rainfall or river water changes in the Brahmaputra and Ganga basins during this period. So, what we're seeing appears linked primarily to urbanisation, construction, agriculture and industrialisation," said Ashis Mitra, a senior scientist at the NCMRWF and a member of the study team.

Mitra and his colleagues used satellite imagery to estimate changes in the TWS along several northern Indian states and the Indo-Gangetic plains. They tried to look for connections to patterns of rainfall and the water discharged by the Ganga and the Brahmaputra and their tributaries.

A paper describing their findings has been accepted for publication in the journal Current Science, published by the Indian Academy of Sciences.

"The TWS represents all surface and groundwater available in the region and it is important for everything - from power to agriculture to drinking water," said Satya Prakash, a remote-sensing specialist at the NCMRWF who led the study.

The researchers used a pair of US-German satellites named GRACE - Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment - that track subtle changes in the Earth's gravity on each other to estimate changes in surface and groundwater on the planet.

Five years ago, scientists at US space agency Nasa had used GRACE to estimate that India's northwestern granary states of Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan had lost groundwater by an average of 100cm every three years.

Earlier this year, scientists at India's National Remote Sensing Agency, Hyderabad, found that groundwater levels in the Indo-Gangetic plains had also been declining by about 3mm per month between 2005 and 2010.

"Most earlier studies looked at relatively smaller regions. Our study covers a very large region, and that is a cause for concern," Prakash told The Telegraph.

The NCMRWF scientists collaborating with researchers at the Space Applications Centre, Ahmedabad, and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, studied TWS in a region that covered Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, northern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bengal, Odisha and the northeastern states.

Mitra said the next phase of the study would seek to use imagery from multiple remote-sensing satellites to explore connections between changes in land cover and land use patterns and the observed depletion in TWS.


The Telegraph, 24 October, 2014, http://www.telegraphindia.com/1141024/jsp/nation/story_18957668.jsp#.VEnJAHs_-BE


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