WATER BALANCE STUDY OF SEMI - ARID REGION ? A CASE STUDY

Rational estimation of groundwater potential of any region is one of the major influential factors towards increasing the cultivable land area in that region. Groundwater is pumped out regularly to supplement the available surface water resources in fulfilling the water demands of the region. Increase in population and more demand of water for irrigation purposes and domestic uses will cause the digging up of gr eater number of tube wells to meet the increasing water demand, thus, the water table will fall at a faster rate resulting in increased cost of pumping. The concept of Water Balance helps in studying the behaviour and hydrological characteristics of a catc hment area. Thus, Precipitation and Evapotranspiration are major sources of input and output of water respectively. The development, planning and operation of water resources project are dependent upon the availability of water in the required quantity. Th e present study is based upon the available data on Agra district of Uttar Pradesh to manage the sustainable development of the available water resources to meet the demand. Thus, in order to estimate the safe draft of groundwater, location of new wells an d to suggest other economical sources of water this study was carried out. In areas where unfavourable geological conditions exist, rainwater harvesting has proven to be a very effective and promising solution to the problem of groundwater recharge.