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The River Chenab is one of the largest rivers in Pakistan with an average annual flow of 5.29 billion cubic metres (BCM). The river traverses a total length of 576 km through a number of densely populated and industrial cities in the Punjab province of Pakistan. In the present study, a segment of 292 km was monitored for a variety of cardinal water quality constituents during the low-flow months of 2006-07 and 2007-08. Water quality indices (WQIs) were calculated for three uses of the river water, i.e. irrigation, drinking and aquatic life, using the CWQI 1.0 model developed by the task group of the Canadian Council of Ministers of the Environment (CCME). The results revealed that the lower river reach (185-233 km) was more polluted than the upper 185 km segment. In this river reach, overall WQI ranking was poor for drinking and marginal for both irrigation and aquatic life. The WQIs for all three uses were ranked poor at the sampling station located at 233 km along the river. Copyright Des index de qualité de l'eau (WQIs) ont été calculés pour trois usages de l'eau de rivière -irrigation, eau potable, vie aquatique -utilisant le modèle CWQI 1.0 développé par le groupe de travail du Conseil canadien des ministres de l'environnement (CCME). Les résultats ont indiqué que la partie la plus en aval du fleuve (185 à 233 kilomètres) était plus polluée que les 185 kilomètres en amont. Dans cette partie du fleuve, le classement global de WQI indiquait une qualité de l'eau mauvaise pour la consommation et médiocre pour l'irrigation et la vie aquatique. Les WQIs pour chacun des trois usages indiquaient une eau de mauvaise qualité à la station de prélèvement située à 233 kilomètres le long du fleuve.

The apportionment of waters of the Indus River System between the provinces of Pakistan is widely hailed as a historic agreement. This agreement (herein referred to as the Accord) was signed into effect in 1991, just over 25 years ago. The Accord lacks a clearly stated objective and hence it is difficult to review the Accord against its objective. This paper presents a detailed thematic review of the Accord and interprets the literature and data sets that have become available over the last 25 years. Although the Accord leaves room for interpretation, which is often biased to a particular perspective, an obvious starting point that has been highlighted in the literature is to improve water accounting in the Indus basin and to clarify and document the Operating Rules. Over the next 25 years, demographic change, socioeconomic change, and climate change in the Indus Basin will place this Accord under increased scrutiny.

In this research we explore the potential of precision surface irrigation to improve irrigation performance under the warabandi system prevalent in the Indus Basin Irrigation System. Data on field dimensions, field slopes along with characteristic soil infiltration properties and outlet discharge were collected through a survey of a sample tertiary unit of Maira Branch Canal, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, Pakistan. The performance of all fields in the tertiary unit was analysed and reported in aggregate, with detailed results of one field presented for illustration. The objective is to determine the optimum field layout, defined as the number of border strips, for the observed field characteristics to maximize performance. The results indicate that performance improvement is relatively easily achievable through changes in field layout within current irrigation services. Estimated application efficiency is sensitive to the selected depth of application, and it is important that a practical depth of application is selected. We recommend a depth of application of 50 mm and show how this is achievable and leads to a low quarter distribution uniformity of 0.750 and an application efficiency of 80 %. We also explore the feasibility of a 10-day warabandi rather than the 7-day warabandi and show that there is no significant change in the performance under a 10-day warabandi

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