Fourteenth International Conference on Climate Change: Impacts & Responses

Abstract

Supply-demand assessment based on water balance parameters is critical for effective management of climate change risks, especially in India – where 52% of net sown area comes under rainfed agriculture. The impacts of climate change in rainfed agriculture are complex and diverse due to varying bio-physical conditions involving soil type, soil depth, slope etc. While numerous water balance models exist, their applicability by planners and community for decision making is challenging. Under such circumstances this study developed a village level seasonal water budgeting framework to quantify climate stress, estimate runoff, soil moisture, ground water available for mitigating climate stress and crop water demand based on a daily time step point level water balance model adapted from SWAT for Indian scenario. The outputs of this framework feed into the village level plans of Project on Climate Resilient Agriculture being implemented by government in 5143 drought prone villages of Maharashtra, India. Training was given to planners to conduct field surveys, collect data and run the GIS based web app for water budget. While the model results are being validated in second stage and model is continuously being improvised for data available at better spatio-temporal resolution, the scientific validity of the model is the subject matter of another paper. This paper focusses on the planning framework and its roll out. The study concludes that the development of such web-based frameworks at finer resolution will provide decision support in variety of interlinked applications like water budgeting, NRM and crop planning, contingency planning, and advisory.