Assessment of impact of watershed management structures on hydrology

Abstract

Watershed management practices are the prime considered factors for a healthy environment, Construction of bunds, trenches, check dams, land leveling, and some of the gully control structures are some of the watershed management practices. The most important and widely used management practice is the check dam. The study aimed to investigate the impacts due to the assessment of check dams in the study area Chikkodi taluka area, Karnataka, India. In this study, the model SWAT was used to simulate the runoff in the study area. The calibration and validation of the model was done for the period 1997 to 2001 and 2001 to 2005 respectively. The statistical parameters used are the regression correlation coefficient (R²) and the Nash-Sutcliffe model efficiency (NSE) and got the good values. The calibrated model was then used to simulate to evaluate the effect of watershed management practices (implementation of check dam) on the hydrology of the watershed. The runoff value for the case without the implementation of the check dam duration (1983-2005) was 16.3854 m³s^-1and for the case with a check dam, the runoff was 11.1961 m³s^-1.

The implementation of the watershed management practice has reduced the runoff in the watershed, and which has helped to a reduction of sediment transport and an increase in groundwater recharge.