Groundwater Storage Variations in India
In recent years, intense abstraction of groundwater has led to depletion in groundwater storage (GWS) in India, the second most populous country in the world. In this chapter, we demonstrate our work on estimating groundwater storage over India by using d
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Groundwater Storage Variations in India Soumendra Nath Bhanja, Abhijit Mukherjee and Matthew Rodell
Abstract In recent years, intense abstraction of groundwater has led to depletion in groundwater storage (GWS) in India, the second most populous country in the world. In this chapter, we demonstrate our work on estimating groundwater storage over India by using data from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite mission to study long-term (2003–2014) change in GWS over India. Rapid depletion of GWS is observed in the Indus–Ganges River basin in the northern and eastern parts of the Indian subcontinent at rates of about −1.25 ± 0.14 (−12.56 ± 1.37 km3/year) and −1.05 ± 0.35 cm/year (−13.12 ± 4.36 km3/year), respectively. The fertile alluvial plains of this semiarid basin support huge areas of irrigated agriculture, leading to depletion of GWS. On the other hand, the southern and western parts exhibit groundwater replenishment. Keywords Groundwater storage anomaly GRACE
Indian subcontinent
S. N. Bhanja A. Mukherjee (&) Department of Geology and Geophysics, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)—Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, West Bengal, India e-mail: [email protected] A. Mukherjee School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)—Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, West Bengal, India A. Mukherjee Hydroscience and Policy Advisory Group, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)—Kharagpur, Kharagpur 721302, West Bengal, India M. Rodell Hydrological Sciences Laboratory, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt 20771, MD, USA © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 A. Mukherjee (ed.), Groundwater of South Asia, Springer Hydrogeology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3889-1_4
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Introduction
Groundwater, being the largest freshwater resource available on earth, plays a crucial role in human sustenance and global food security by supporting irrigated agriculture where surface waters are inadequate (Aeschbach-Hertig and Gleeson 2012). This is particularly true in the Indian subcontinent (ISC), which comprise only *4% of the world’s land but hosts about 24% of its population and more than 30% of global irrigated land (FAO 2013). Groundwater-fed irrigated area has expanded from 30% in 1960 to *50% of the total irrigated areas in 1995 in India (Scanlon et al. 2010). The ISC faces acute shortages of freshwater for drinking and other purposes, as it is witnessing a steep rise in water demand combined with changes in water use patterns because of rapid urbanization and economic/lifestyle changes. Rapid groundwater storage (GWS) depletion in some of the densest populated areas in the globe (Rodell et al. 2009; Feng et al. 2013; Voss et al. 2013; Bhanja et al. 2014) has the potential to make billions of people suffer from socioeconomic stress in the near future. Effective water management is complicated by changes in hydrological cycle (Fig. 4.1) in the form of enhancement of atmospheric water vapor content; alteration in patterns of pr
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