Water, the source of life, is passionate. Too passionate to manage. Excess of it leads to flood and lack of it results in drought and famine. According to experts, overuse of water for irrigation and overpumping of groundwater threatens India with the world’s largest annual water shortage that will affect food supply for the near-billion population. One fourth or 50 million tonne of India’s grain could be lost due to underground water depletion. The Ganges and the Indus have virtually no outflow to the sea in the dry season. Water tables in critical agricultural areas are declining at alarming rate. Overgrowing demand of water and increasing shortage of it may lead to major conflicts. It is important to make the people value water more so that they will waste less and pollute less
Remote sensing technology and Geographic Information System have been extensively used in exploitation of surface and groundwater in many areas. Now, time has come to use these technologies to realise the concepts such as artificial recharge, water harvesting and watershed management. These technologies have the potential to help in reaching the ultimate goal of water management so that everyone can get water.
In this section of GIS@development, efforts have been made to explore the potential of GIS technology in water modelling for surface and groundwater both, and its capabilities in handling the issues related to water management and development.
– Ravi Gupta
