Ecosystem hydrology
Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Pradeep Joshi, Rakesh. K.N, Kiram. M.C., Kiran, Vishal .K Mehta
The role of many natural and human-modified ecosystems in ecosystem hydrologic
services for society are poorly understood. The objectives of this group are to
critically assess the hydrologic role of forest and grassland ecosystems in
relation to disturbance and degradation and encourage participative and stake-holder
driven research and generate awareness about hydrologic services of forests and grasslands.
Projects
Effects of mining in Kudremukh on sedimentation of Bhadra river and Bhadra reservoir
Montane tropical forests and grasslands in the high rainfall Western Ghats mountains
of South India sustain high biodiversity and provide valuable watershed services.
The Kudremukh National Park which is upstream of a major irrigation reservoir
(Bhadra) in Karnataka, India has had an open-cast mining activity since the
early 1980s. This area has the highest rainfall for any open-cast mining
operation in the world (upto 10,000 mm yr-1 and over 400 mm day-1).
This project was funded by the Wildlife Conservation Society's India program and
was done in collaboration with Center for Wildlife Studies and the Kudremukh Wildlife Foundation.
This study authorized by the State Government of Karnataka in 2001 dealt with
the impact of the mining on suspended sediment load in the Bhadra river and
reservoir. Specifically the objectives of this study are to:
Assess the impact of the mining and associated activities in Kudremukh on the
suspended sediment load in the Bhadra river and reservoir using both available
secondary data and primary data collected during two successive monsoons in
2002 and 2003.
The results of this study contributed to the Supreme Court ruling to stop mining
in Kudremukh by end-2005.
Effects of Land-cover change on watershed services
ATREE along with its partners Centre for Inter-Disciplinary Studies in
Environment and Development (CISED), UNESCO, National Institute of Hydrology
and Karnataka Forest Department has initiated a multi-institutional,
multi-disciplinary and stake-holder-linked research project that will
carefully examine the poorly understood link between land-use/land-cover
changes and watershed services at the local and regional scale in the
Western Ghats region. The region is the primary catchment for most of
the rivers in peninsular India.
The study will be carried out in two sub-regions of the Western Ghats that
represent distinct combinations of rainfall regimes, forest types, soils,
land-use strategies, and the social importance of watershed services.
Soil-hydrological monitoring will be carried by out a team of hydrologists
with stakeholder involvement. Social scientists will estimate socio-economic
benefits and costs accruing to various stakeholders from watershed services
and from forest ecosystem goods resulting from different land-uses. The state
agency primarily responsible for forest management in the Western Ghats is
already a participant in this proposal; local stakeholders from community groups,
self-governance institutions and NGOs will also be identified and involved in
planning, monitoring and dissemination of results.
The ATREE team has instrumented degraded and relatively well protected catchments
in the Bandipur National Park and Biligirirangan Temple wildlife sanctuary in Karnataka
and is analyzing the micro and macro scale effects of forest degradation on
hydrologic processes.
Recent research and field observations indicate that these land-use changes could have
very significant but complex influences on different aspects of watershed functioning,
including summer season flows, groundwater recharge, and soil erosion, in ways that
affect a variety of stakeholders in different ways.
Effects of land-cover change on hydrology: Trend analyses
The relationship between long-term climate and land-cover change and effects on
hydrology and water resources is a frontier area in hydrology and global change
research. ATREE in collaboration with the National Institute of Hydrology, the
Centre for Inter-Disciplinary Research In Environment and Development (CISED)
and the Water Science program of UNESCO is using available time-series data on
rainfall, streamflow and remotely sensed data on land-cover to analyze catchment
response to land-cover change and climate change in the Western Ghats.
Facilities and infrastructure
The hydrology laboratory at ATREE is well equipped with the state of the art
instrumentation such as computers, data loggers, tipping bucket rain gauges,
self recording rain gauges, current meters, sediment samplers and evaporimeters.
It has extensive field experience in instrumenting catchments and collecting
hydrologic data under adverse field conditions.
Publications
Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Michael Lavine, Daniel D. Richter and Karl Korfmacher, 2000.
Dynamic Modeling of Long-term Sedimentation in the Yadkin River basin. Advances in
Water Resources. Vol 23, no 8
Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Daniel D. Richter, Patrick Halpin and Michael Hofmockel, 2001.
Spatial Patterns of Suspended Sediment Yields in a Humid Tropical Watershed in Costa
Rica. Hydrological Processes, Vol 15
Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Patrick N. Halpin and Daniel D. Richter, 2001. Dynamics of
sediment discharge in relation to land-use and hydro-climatology in a tropical,
humid watershed. J. of Hydrology. 253: 91-109.
Jagdish Krishnaswamy, Daniel D. Richter, 2002. Properties of advanced-weathering
stage soils in Tropical Forests and Pastures. J. Soil Science Society of America.
66: 244-253.
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