Watershed Development Impact on Natural Resources: Groundwater and Surface Water Utilization

The dwindling situation of groundwater resources in the Eastern Ghats Highland region of East India has hampered the livelihood security of the rural peoples living in this area. In this context, the impact of watershed development activities, especially water resource management activities on the livelihood security of the peoples residing in this area, was assessed. Lacchaputraghati watershed of Koraput district of Odisha was chosen as the representative watershed for this study. The study area is dominated by agriculture land use with predominantly monocropping, covering 43% of the watershed area. Forest and scrublands are also dominant and shifting cultivation is rampant. Before the start of the project, the average runoff in the watershed was 24.4%, which was decreased to 14.6% after the successful implementation of the project. Finger millet and upland paddy cultivation are the highly runoff-prone land uses where watershed management treatments reduced the runoff from 29.92% to 15.4%. Even in forested areas, the runoff was decreased from 14.68% to 7.3%. Rainwater harvesting and storing capacity was increased by 93.91 ha-cm within the watershed. The average annual water storage depth in the water bodies was increased from 1.01 to 1.17 m during the project period. A positive change to the tune of 15.04% was observed in terms of water storage capacity within the watershed. The annual average depth to water table from the land surface was decreased from 7.95 to 7.80 m within a span of 5 years because of watershed management activities. The crop yield also responded positively to the watershed management activities and increased by 9.14% with the range of 3–15% for different crops. Therefore, the watershed development activities have shown a positive impact on the conservation of natural resources, especially water resources, and need to be replicated in other areas for sustainable management of natural resources.