Natural Resource Management in Hilly Watersheds: A Case Study of India

Soil and water are the most vital natural resources for agriculture. Water scarcity is a burning problem for the hill agrarians. Irregular rainfall pattern and high surface runoff are the main reasons of water scarcity and subsequent drought conditions in Himalayan hilly regions. Viable sources of water like springs, which are plenty in hills, are drying up because of inadequate recharge of flow domain of springs and there is great disturbance in hydrologic cycle of hilly areas. The difficulty to reach the nature of hilly areas possesses serious limitation on ground observation. Field experimentation and information collection to develop planning activities is, therefore, necessary. Keeping this in view the present study was conducted to study the topography, soil conditions, land use pattern, soil characteristics, morphometric characteristics, rainfall behavior and to design suitable water harvesting structures for Henval watershed in Uttarakhand state of India.The people dealing with management of land and water resources, application of Geo-informatics in water resources engineering towards their academic and research pursuit,could benefit from this book.