Water accounting of Kurukshetra district and assessing effects of sustainable interventions on water saving

Appraisal of water resources at tempo-spatial scales enables proper planning for water resource utilization and efficient management for sustainable development. Water availability in the Kurukshetra district is declining due to the indiscriminate withdrawal of the groundwater aquifers. Therefore, this investigation aimed to carry out a water accounting exercise in Kurukshetra district, Haryana, to estimate water resources availability and present water use in the irrigation sector. Water accounting methodology is based on the water balance concept estimation of various water balance components viz., surface water, groundwater, and water use by various sectors were done for the year 2015 employing standard methods. Results revealed that district's net available water was 646 million cubic meters (MCM). Also, total crop water demand and other sector's demand are estimated to be (domestic, hydropower, industrial and power generation) 1399.8 MCM and 48.6 MCM, respectively. The gross water demand in the year 2015 was 1448.2 MCM. This depicts that the demand is not full filled by the available water and there was a gap of 802.2 MCM between the water demand and water available. This demand gap was met by the withdrawal of groundwater. To improve water availability, the adoption of water management interventions was exercised. It was found that delayed rice transplanting from 21st May to 15th June saves crop water demand by 10.89%. Similarly, transplanting rice on 15th June reduces crop water demand by 9.03, 6.23, 4.31 and 2.46% compared to transplanting on 26th May, 31st May, 5th June, and 10th June, respectively. Additionally, a 1.92% reduction in rice crop demand may be achieved by transplanting on 20th June instead of 15th June. Replacement of rice by maize crop reduces crop demand by 54.66% ha-1. Other water conservation techniques viz., laser land levelling (LLL) and zero-till sowing offers great advantage and could be of great importance to improve the water availability in the district. Results of the present investigation may aid in the development of water management strategies at the district level to improve water sustainability.