Impact Assessment of the Upcoming Irrigation Projects and Climate Change on the Droughts and Desertification Scenario for Chambal Basin in Western Madhya Pradesh (NIH-5_2016_6)

Abstract

The report highlights the key findings from assessments of drought, desertification and climate change perspective for Chambal basin in western Madhya Pradesh. The study devised a new approach to assess the integrated vulnerability to drought, climate change and desertification after the separate assessments of drought vulnerability, desertification vulnerability and extreme climate vulnerability using appropriate indicators. The vulnerability to drought, desertification and extreme climate was assessed using the spatial and spatio temporal indicators based on their capability to quantify these aspects. An indicator-based approach has been used to evaluate the drought characteristics in the historical and future time periods. Only those indicators have been selected that can easily project the drought and desertification into the future with the available future climate data, so that the impacts of climate change can be easily assessed. Scenario based analysis has been carried out to study the impacts of the upcoming projects on the water availability and command that can be irrigated during drought periods of varying drought severities. The overall aim of the study has been to develop an integrated vulnerability assessment framework comprising of drought desertification and extreme climate change based on the indicator based evaluation of the various characteristics of all these aspects.