Water Balance and Watershed Development of the Papagni River Basin

The Papagni River is a sub basin of Pennar River, India. Water is an important liquid gold. The basin experiences high water deficit due to low rainfall and high loss of water through evaporation and evapotranspiration. Water balance plays a crucial role in the optimum utilization and conservation of water resources. Of all the climatic parameters rainfall is an important input, which controls the irrigation and total cropped area under rained conditions. The water lost in the form of surface run-off, has to be stored adopting watershed management programmes in the basin by constructing check dams, percolation ponds and water harvesting structures. Therefore, to avoid the scarcity of water in the basin it becomes mandatory to harvest every drop of rain water for domestic use and agriculture activities and also introduce the modern irrigation practices like sprinkler, drip and trickle.