Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
bodies (ponds, tanks, river and canals). Where the slope is 1° or more, relatively the
surface water bodies are few in these areas.
Frequency of Surface Water Bodies (FSWB)
Frequency of surface water bodies can be defined as the number of water bodies per
km
2
area (Prakasam and Biswas
2010
). Water is an important locating factor for
settlement and it remains present on the earth's surface in the form of rivers, ponds
and lakes. The quantity of water directly used by man is comparatively small, but
for agriculture in the form of irrigation is very large.
In Ausgram block availability of surface water bodies are calculated using fre-
quency of surface water bodies per km
2
. Distributions of surface water bodies are
very much irregular in Ausgram block. As already stated, the data has been gener-
ated using 1 km
2
grid; here also the same methodology has been followed. Isolines
have been drawn to analyse the data in better way. It has been observed that some
region is having more than 30 number of surface water bodies per km
2
area and in
some cases it is less than two surface water bodies per km
2
area. Using isolines,
present study area is divided into four zones i.e. <2, 2-10, 10-15 and >15 water
bodies per square kilometre. Maximum concentration of water bodies within 1 km
2
area is located in north east central part (36 water bodies/km
2
) of the study area.
The first zone of surface water frequency, <2 number of water bodies/km
2
, covers
about 42 % of the total study area; 2-10 number of water bodies/km
2
covers about
39 % of the total study area. More than 15 water bodies/km
2
zone is distributed in
north east, north east central, south east and north west parts of the present study
area (Fig.
6
). It covers 10 % of the total study area. Generally in Ausgram block
many water bodies are present but water is not available from those water bodies in
most of the months of a year. The ground reality shows that these water bodies add
little water to the region in drier periods.
Surface Water Harvesting Potential Zone (SWHPZ)
Identification
Most of the areas in Ausgram blocks I and II are affected by water stressed condi-
tions. As a result cultivation of the study region suffers almost every year. Most of
the agricultural lands are being cultivated only once in a year. An attempt has been
made to identify the surface water harvesting potential zones of the study region.
The geomorphic resources (Ruggedness Index (RI), Relative Relief (RR), Drainage
Density (DD), Slope and Frequency of Surface Water Bodies (FSWB)) are used to
prepare the zones through overlay method. In this overlay method, GIS tool has been
adapted for identification and classification of the surface water harvesting zones.
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