Abstract:
Estimation of recharge to groundwater is crucial to better water resources management, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. In general, it is difficult to estimate recharge to groundwater due to rainfall or irrigation using conventional methods due to non availability of adequate data. Nuclear methods, specially tritium tagging technique has been used successfully in different countries including many parts in India.
The National Institute of Hydrology has taken up the comprehensive hydrological studies in the Narmada catchment. As a part of these studies the Nuclear Hydrology Division has taken up estimation of recharge to groundwater due to rainfall and irrigation for which the tritium tagging technique has been used to carry out recharge studies in parts of the Narsinghpur district, M.P. under Narmada catchment. In the study area, experiments have been carried out in cultivated as well as in uncultivated fields. In the study area, mainly four types of soils were found, namely clay, clay loam, loam and sandy clay loam in which clay predominant. The average annual rainfall of the area is 1246 mm. The percentage of recharge to groundwater varies from 12.22% to 22.4% in the study area with respect to the type of soil and other geohydrological conditions. This report presents the details of the methodology followed and details about the area including the results obtained with regard to the values of recharge to groundwater obtained mainly due to rains during the monsoon season of the year 1996.
