Isolating the impacts of anthropogenic water use within the hydrological regime of north India

Abstract

The effects of anthropogenic water use play a significant role in determining the hydrological cycle of north India. This paper explores anthropogenic impacts within the region's hydrological regime by explicitly including observed human water use behaviour, irrigation infrastructure and the natural environment in the CHANSE (Coupled Human And Natural Systems Environment) socio‐hydrological modelling framework. The model is constrained by observed qualitative and quantitative information collected in the study area, along with climate and socio‐economic variables from additional sources. Four separate scenarios, including business as usual (BAU, representing observed irrigation practices), groundwater irrigation only (where the influence of the canal network is removed), canal irrigation only (where all irrigation water is supplied by diverted surface water) and rainfed only (where all human interventions are removed) are used. Under BAU conditions the modelling framework closely matched observed groundwater levels. Following the removal of the canal network, which forces farmers to rely completely on groundwater for irrigation, water levels decrease, while under a canal‐only scenario flooding occurs. Under the rainfed‐only scenario, groundwater levels similar to current business‐as‐usual conditions are observed, despite much larger volumes of recharge and discharge entering and leaving the system under BAU practices. While groundwater abstraction alone may lead to aquifer depletion, the conjunctive use of surface and groundwater resources, which includes unintended contributions of canal leakage, create conditions similar to those where no human interventions are present. Here, the importance of suitable water management practices, in maintaining sustainable water resources, is shown. This may include augmenting groundwater resources through managed aquifer recharge and reducing the impacts on aquifer resources through occasional canal water use where possible. The importance of optimal water management practices that highlight trade‐offs between environmental impact and human wellbeing are shown, providing useful information for policy makers, water managers and users. © 2019 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Systematic Review of Spatial-Temporal Scale Issues in Sociohydrology

“…Farming and irrigation management Nüsser et al, 2012Nüsser et al, , 2019Bury et al, 2013;Ertsen et al, 2014;Liu et al, 2014;Pande and Ertsen, 2014;Schumann and Nijssen, 2014;Purdue and Berger, 2015;Den Besten et al, 2016;Giuliani et al, 2016;Jeong and Adamowski, 2016;Martin et al, 2016;Bouziotas and Ertsen, 2017;Han et al, 2017;Noël and Cai, 2017;Nüsser and Schmidt, 2017;Roobavannan et al, 2017;Sanderson et al, 2017;Srinivasan et al, 2017;Essenfelder et al, 2018;Gunda et al, 2018;Iwanaga et al, 2018;Kuil et al, 2018;O'Keeffe et al, 2018O'Keeffe et al, , 2020Ogilvie et al, 2019;Pouladi et al, 2019;Sun et al, 2019;Khalifa et al, 2020;Hanus, 2021;Lu et al, 202131 20% Groundwater Elshafei et al, 2015Hu et al, 2015;Bakarji et al, 2017;Han et al, 2017;Noël and Cai, 2017;Re et al, 2017;Srinivasan et al, 2017;Al-Amin et al, 2018;Hough et al, 2018;Iwanaga et al, 2018;O'Keeffe et al, 2018;…”

“…Temporal resolution was also coded by recording the overall temporal resolution for a study or individually recording the temporal resolutions of the different data used in a study. Temporal resolution varied from groundwater level data collected every 15 min (O'Keeffe et al, 2020) to sociohydrological interactions over 6,000-year periods (early-Neolithic, middle-Neolithic, and late-Neolithic; Zhao and Mo, 2020). However, this variable is not reported quantitatively as the majority of studies reviewed did not provide sufficient information for coders to confidently identify temporal resolution.…”

“…For example, multiple primary studies focused on the Heihe River Basin in China (Lu et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2019;Du et al, 2020) and the Murrumbigee River Basin in Australia (Roobavannan et al, 2017(Roobavannan et al, , 2018(Roobavannan et al, , 2020. Further, studies analyzing sociohydrological processes within watersheds often prioritized water resource management, especially as it concerned the sociohydrological processes of irrigation (Roobavannan et al, 2017;Sanderson et al, 2017;Nüsser et al, 2019;Ogilvie et al, 2019;O'Keeffe et al, 2020) and drought (Di Baldassarre et al, 2017;Pouladi et al, 2019;Medeiros and Sivapalan, 2020). Studies analyzing sociohydrological processes at the city level were often focused on water resource management as it related to stormwater (Tellman Faust et al, 2017;Tellman et al, 2018;Souza et al, 2021), and human water consumption (Li et al, 2019;Savelli et al, 2021).…”

Geomorphic diversity of the Indian sub‐continent: Progress and updates

“…In this context, the incorporation of human water use behaviour, irrigation infrastructure and natural environment in a socio‐hydrological framework (O'Keeffe et al, 2018) is a very promising approach. O'Keeffe et al (2020) take these ideas further in a case study in parts of the Gandak basin in north Bihar, eastern India. This work highlights the need to incorporate the human behaviour and practices in analysing the hydrology of an agriculture‐dominated region and therefore contributes significantly towards building resilience against hydrological stress related to water use.…”

Socio-Hydrology: A New Understanding to Unite or a New Science to Divide?

“…We emphasize that many of the publications that have identified themselves as socio-hydrologic research are significant and provide very useful insights. The scientific findings and suggestions of papers such as [14,15,[93][94][95][96][97][98][99][100][101][102][103][104][105][106][107][108][109] are significant and potentially helpful for policymaking. Though, given that their questions, methods of study, and analysis frameworks are similar to what already existed Reintroducing what exists in the literature without referring to it is not supposed to be a scientific contribution.…”