Lake hydrology

Abstract

The hydrology of lake is a subject that has not attracted the attention of Indian Hydrologists even upto the 1980's decade. In the International level, the area drew the attention of hydrologists after the symposium held at Garda in 1966. Since then, remarkable progress has been made in the developed countries, however, the progress made if any, in our country in this field is very little and may be negligible when compared with the development made in the developed countries. There are some piecemeal works on hydrological components of lake but the components studied had not been looked upon in the context of overall hydrological aspects of lake nor gave any thought with special reference to the importance of lake in the hydrologic balance. Though, lakes play a signifacant role in shaping the socio-cultural, socio-economic, ecological and hydrological balance of a region, however, activities of our predecessors reveal that seldom do these important facts realized by our planners and scientists even upto 1980 decades. Importance of lakes in the light of ecology and limnology had been realized even before the independence preiod and some studies had been conducted on those aspects for few lakes. Studies carried out after independence mainly dealt with the ecological as well as limnological aspects of lake. Based on the available information, studies carried out and development made in India have been reported in this chapter . Recently National Institute of Hydrology Roorkee has established a Division on `Lake Hydrology' to study the hydrological problems of India's Lakes, and to develop methods of solution of such problems, Since, hydrology of lake is an emerging area and so many factors are resposible in the hydrologic chain of the lake, a concise idea has been given in the subsequent paragraphs.