Assessment of Climate Change Effect on Water Harvesting Structures in Rainfed Regions: Geospatial Data Mining Approach

Advances in the Information and Technologies (ICT) may assist researchers in the assessment of watershed development programmes by developing better visualization understanding of their impacts. GIS based research studies utilizing remote sensing images can facilitate in identifying the potential zones for watershed development and enable improved ground water resources. Effective watershed management is dependent on a number of factors such as demography, climate, soil, land use and topography and these are affected by changing climatic conditions. For example, changes in rainfall intensity and volume in rain fed areas can influence the effectiveness of the placement of watershed structures. Existing methods of impact assessment of watershed development, which are based on farmers’ interviews and traditional statistical analysis may explain the impact to a certain extent—the influences of drought or high rainfall conditions. However, with changing rainfall patterns and temperature regimes the effect of infiltration and evaporation of these watersheds needs further analysis. Novel geospatial data mining techniques could help in knowledge discovery and unknown pattern identification of the effects of these changes in rainfall and temperature patterns on the placement of watershed structures. An approach by utilizing these methods to simulate watershed development conditions in different climate conditions will help watershed management officials to make efficient and timely investments for placement of water harvesting structures using a more scientific assessment. Techniques such as spatial trend analysis help to visualize the changes in the ground water level, land use pattern at different rainfall situations. This approach could also help in studying the temporal changes at smaller intervals and with different intensities of rainfall in monsoonal and non-monsoon situations.