Current World Environment

The estimation of climatic alteration influencing on groundwater recharge will help to prepare a future plan for groundwater development and management planning for the basin. It will also be helpful for agriculture as well as other resource planning. The required shift in cropping pattern can also be judged. The study was undertaken for Shetrunji river basin having an area of 5646.98 km². The entire area was found consisting of 17 watersheds. The climate change impact on Rainfall, Runoff and estimated groundwater recharge by 3 different methods were assessed. The groundwater recharge varied from 3.11% to 49.28%, 0% to 15.34% and 0.72% to 14.62% of rainfall by water balance, Krishna Rao (1970) and water table variation respectively. The climate change impacts favors to increase the rainfall significantly in 6 out of 17 watersheds while the runoff is found increasing in 5 out of 17 watersheds of the basin. The rainfall and runoff was influenced by the climate change in Northern part of upper reach and southernmost part of middle reach of basin. The area weighted rainfall of the Shetrunji river basin was found increasing significantly. The areal mean depth of monsoon runoff for entire Shetrunji basin was increasing significantly at the rate of 17.7 mm per decade. The groundwater recharge assessed by water balance method was found higher as compared to Krishna Rao (1970) and water level fluctuation method. The groundwater recharge expected by water balance, Krishna Rao (1970) and water level fluctuation methods is found to be enlarged in 13, 9 and 6 watersheds out of 17 watershed of the basin. The areal mean depth of groundwater recharge in Shetrunji basin during monsoon season in water level fluctuation method was found increasing significantly at the rate of 13.01 mm per decade due to climate change impacts.