WA TE R S HE D CONSERVATION

AND MANAGEMENT
 CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PRINCIPLES OF WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
• OBJECTIVES OF WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
• USE OF REMOTESENSING AND GIS IN WATERSHED
• MANAGEMENT TYPES OF WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
• FACTORS AFFECTING WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
• WATERSHED MANAGEMENT PRACTICES
• CONCLUSION
 INTRODUCTION
Water is an essential to our existance or the
breathing air. We can survive without food for several weeks, but
without water we would die in a few days.
Watershed is a geohydrological unit or piece of
land that drain at a common point. It is defined as the “any spatial area
from which rain or irrigation water is collected and drained through a
common point”.
It is a geographic region where hydrological
conditions are, such that water becomes concentrated within a particular
location, eg: a river or reservoir, by which the watershed is drained. The
watershed is important sources of drinking water.
 CONT……
Watershed management is a form
meant to capture the sum of the action taken to preserve
and maintain watersheds. Watersheds is the land area
draining to a point on a stream or river, its nature’s
production unit for water supplies. It is the process of
guiding and co-ordinating use of land and water resources
in a watershed.
The management of watershed includes
all measurements that can be taken to protect, manage,
and conserve water and related land resources.
 PRINCIPLES OF WATERSHED
MANAGEMENT
• Utilizing the land based on its capability.
• Protecting fertile top layer soil.
• Minimizing setting up of tanks, reservoir and lower
fertile land.
• Protecting vegetative cover throughout the year.
• In situ conservation of rainwater.
• Safe diversion of gullies and construction of check dams
for increasing ground water recharge.
• Water harvesting for supplemental irrigation.
OBJECTIVES OF WATERSHED
MANAGEMENT
The watershed aims, ultimately at
improving standard of living of common people in the
basin by increasing their earning capacity, by offering
facilities such as electricity, drinking water, irrigation water,
freedom from fears, floods etc.

• Adequate water supply for domestic , agricultural and

industrial needs.
• Abatement of organic, inorganic and soil pollution.
• To protect and enhance the water resource originating in
the watershed.
• To increase infiltration of rainwater.
 USE OF REMOTESENSING AND GIS IN
WATERSHED MANAGEMENT

Remote sensing finds its way to use in

faster assesment of natural resources such as soil,
geology, drainage etc. Aerial photographs and satellites
images convey important information on land use,
vegetation, slope ingredient, erosion etc. It also find its
use in assesment of economic activities through land use
and infrastructure of land use.
GIS is an important tool for tracking spatial
data. GIS give clear perspective for analysis various level
to different patterns of watershed.
Watershed management satellite
imagery
GIS application in
Watershed management
TYPES OF WATERSHED
MANAGEMENT
Grassland
development
Gully
plugs
Tree
plantation
Contour
bedding
Land
leveling
Water conservation
structure
Lift irrigation
scheme
Watershed
development
Micro catchments for
sloping land
Check
dams
Percolation
pond
 FACTORS AFFECTING
WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
a)Watershed characters
i)Size and shape
ii)Topography
iii)Soils
iv)Relief
b)Climatic characteristic
i)Precipitation
ii)Amount and intensity of rainfall
c)Watershed operation
d)Land use pattern
i)Vegetative cover
ii)Density
e)Social status of inhability
f)Water resource and their
capabilities
WATERSHED MANAGEMENT
PRACTICES
1.In terms of purpose
2.To increase infiltration
3.To increase water
holding capacity
4.To prevent soil erosion
5.Method and
accomplishment
Watershed management practices
in Karnataka
 In brief various control
measures are:
1)Vegetative measures
( Agronomical measures)
2)Strip cropping
3)Grass land farming
4)Wood lands
5)Engineering measures
( Structural practices)
6)Contour bunding
7)Terracing
8)Construction of earthern
embankment
9)Construction of check dams
 CONT……
11)Construction of farm ponds
12)Construction of diversion
13)Gully controlling structure
14)Rock dam
15)Establishment of permanent grass and vegetation
16)Providing vegetative and stone barriers
17)Construction of silt tanks detention
18)Influence of soil conservation measures and
vegetation
19)cover on erosion, Runoff and Nutrient loss
20)Pasture cropping
Rainwater harvesting is the main component of
watershed management. Some of the watershed
management structures are as follows.
BROAD BEDS AND FURROWS
•FUNCTION
To control erosion and to conserve soil moisture in the
soil during rainy days.
• GENERAL INFORMATION
•The broad bed and furrow system is laid within the
field boundaries. The land levels taken and it is laid
using either animal drawn or tractor drawn ridges.
BENCH TERRACING
FUNCTION
It helps to bring sloping land into different level strips to enable
cultivation.

4.PUERTORICO TYPE
TERRACE
Watershed management
practice
 CONCLUSION
Watershed is an aspect essential in day
to day life, a vast range of activities of every day life
depend upon adequate supplies of water for example
agriculture and industry, power production, inland
transportation, sanitation and public health services, and
so on. Therefore to provide all these activities
construction of watershed and manage is essential.
Watershed is a geohydrological unit of land that drain at a
common point.
The management of watershed
provides a means to achieve sustainable land and water
management, poor watershed management is a major
cause of land and water degradation rural proverty in the
world.
 PROJECT

• Assessment of watershed pollution potential

(in a know area-Case Study)

• Effects of land scope on soil loss from an

erosion site