Bekal Kunkangar Purandara

• Bachelor of Applied Science
• National Institute of Hydrology

In recent years managing ecological changes and comprehending diverse anthropogenic contributions towards pollution is now of great concern due to industrialization. Therefore, creating an environmentally friendly solution for dealing with harmful substances like Methylene Blue in water has become a critical issue. This experimental investigation a...

The study of changes in land use and land cover (LULC) is helpful in the understanding of change and management of environmental sustainability. As a result, the central Telangana districts are the focus of this study since they are under stress from both natural and human-caused problems. The examination of LULC variations and predictions for the...

The study of changes in land use and land cover (LULC) is helpful in the understanding of change and management of environmental sustainability. As a result, the central Telangana districts are the focus of this study since they are under stress from both natural and human-caused problems. The examination of LULC variations and predictions for the...

In recent years, the advancement in agriculture with special emphasis on crop yield has encouraged farmers to apply large quantities of fertilizers and pesticides. As the top soils are enriched with high organic matter and clay, particularly in black soils, promotes sorption, biological degradation and transformation of contaminants. During the pro...

Surface water samples were collected from selected locations along river Panchaganga, from Kolhapur to Narsobawadi during April 2019. Physicochemical parameters were determined in the laboratory and chemical mass balance approach was adopted to estimate the individual ionic loads in the river water. Streeter-Phelps equation was applied to derive a...

Coastline of Goa is nurtured with various kinds of resources as a result of which there is a huge scale of migration to coastal region which has increased the population significantly. This resulted in over drafting of subsurface water for our day to day utilization (drinking, domestic, agriculture industrial which also include hospitality and cons...

Submarine groundwater discharges to the coastal ecosystems have been recognised as a source of dissolved chemical substances that cause chemical and ecological effects on sea waters. Groundwater, in many coastal areas, becomes contaminated or at least enriched with a variety of chemical substances and can have higher concentrations of dissolved sol...

Infiltration is one of the most important hydrological process through which water enters the soil surface and plays a significant role in controlling soil water storage, crop yields, irrigation efficiency and solute entry into the soil profile. In agriculture fields, generally, the top soils are enriched with high organic matter and clay, particul...

Ghataprabha is an auxiliary of river Krishna and flows over Chandgad taluk of Kolhapur district, Maharashtra. Bauxite mining was one of the major issues in this part of the sub-basin, in the early’ 90s due to which there was a strong public protest about the quality of water. Accordingly, a survey was conducted to get the public perception on water...

With the increasing urbanization, agriculture, industrial activities along the coastal stretches of India, more and more people depend on ground water due to which there are cases of large scale decline in both quantity and quality. One of the State which is facing a critical change in its geomorphology and land use/land cover is Goa which is known...

The assessment of Environmental Flow is river-specific, as each catchment has its own hydrological character, and each river may have a different blend of ecosystems that provide a wide range of valuable services to the society. Environmental flow assessments should be made for a river where development is planned or, equally, for an impacted one w...

Water Quality assessment of lakes, rivers, and reservoirs is a key issue for environmental monitoring and management. Lakes are subjected to sudden environmental changes caused by anthropogenic activities due to their multiple uses (agriculture, fishing, and boating, industrial and water supply). One of the most important issues in lake water manag...

Waterlogging and salinity are the common features associated with many of the irrigation commands of surface water projects. This study aims to estimate the root zone salinity of the left and right bank canal commands of Ghataprabha irrigation command, Karnataka, India. The hydro-salinity model SaltMod was applied to selected agriculture plots at G...

Adsorption of fluoride on seawater-washed activated bauxite residue (SWABR) was studied by using fluoride ion analyzer (ion-selective electrode meter). Bauxite residue from the Bayer process is a waste of aluminium refinery, which is highly alkaline and generated in large quantities, which make its disposal a growing problem. The characterization o...

Sediment transport is an important aspect of all fluvial systems like river flows. Sediment transportation depends on the flow conditions, ratio of densities of sediment and fluid, and the size of the particle. Analysis of sediment yield data is helpful in understanding the distributional characteristics of sedimentation in river basins. Evolving a...

The empirical formulae used for the estimation of flood peak are regionally developed, based on statistical correlation of the observed peak with important catchment and storm properties. Most of these formulae use the catchment area as a single parameter affecting the flood peak, and other factors are clubbed in a region specific coefficient. Howe...

In the present study, process-based rainfall-runoff model namely Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) was calibrated for Manimala River basin in Kerala, with a catchment area of 780 km2. The observed data of rainfall-runoff for a period of 8 years 2000–2007 were used for calibration and validation of the basin. Altogether, seven SWAT model paramet...

Water quality evaluation is of paramount importance due to the population explosion and unprecedented industrial growth. In Indian context, water quality is a serious problem in many of the river basins due to unplanned development of urban and semi-urban areas. One of the major cities which is fast developing in Karnataka is Belagavi (previously k...

Mathematical models provide a scientific and predictive tool for determining appropriate solutions to water allocation, surface water-groundwater interaction, landscape management or impact of new development scenarios. However, if the modelling studies are not well designed from the outset, or the model doesn't adequately represent the natural sys...

Evapotranspiration is an important component in water-balance and irrigation scheduling models. While the FAO-56 Penman-Monteith method has become the de facto standard for estimating reference evapotranspiration (ETo), it is a complex method requiring several weather parameters. Required weather data are oftentimes unavailable, and alternative met...

Water Availability is reported to be one of the most important environmental parameters controlling plant growth. Various studies conducted in various parts of the world and in India concluded that plant productivity is limited by moisture availability. Presumably, higher moisture content enhances the plant growth which in turn affects plant divers...

In the present study, an attempt is made to simulate the current groundwater level in the Ghataprabha sub-basin (Krishna basin) in southern India. For this purpose, a single layered aquifer was conceptualized using Visual MODFLOW Flex ver.14.2. Model calibration was carried out using Parameter Estimation (PEST), with R², RMSE and NRMSE as model eva...

The recognition of temporally stable location with respect to soil moisture content is of importance for soil water management decisions, especially at watershed scale. And most importantly, the profile soil moisture which play a vital role in generation of runoff in a watershed. In this regard, it is very essential to understand the behavior of so...

Human activities have modified the environment for thousands of years. Land use and agriculture play a vital role in sustaining the health, nourishment and economy of the world’s population. At the same time, some land use practices can degrade the quality of our soils, waterways, air and other natural resources. Ghataprabha river is one of the maj...

A study was made for evaluating the water quality of river Ghataprabha by measuring various physicochemical and biological water quality parameters. During last decade lot of anthropogenic activities such as unplanned agricultural activities are ongoing in many parts of the catchment. Further, new settlements are also coming up at various places. T...

Streams which are in many areas serving the basic needs of water, plays a significant role in shaping the environmental and ecological balance of the region through which it flows. Despite of all these versatile contributory roles, knowingly or unknowingly are being used as a dumping site for disposal of municipal and industrial waste waters with i...

We review the current status of experimental studies in India to understand the linkages between afforestation and hydrology. This discipline deals with the use and management of water, social awareness of environmental problems, and ecosystem limitations on provision of watershed services by river basins in the mountain regions of India. Our revie...

The hydrologic effects of forest use and reforestation of degraded lands in the humid tropics has implications for local and regional hydrologic services but such issues have been relatively less studied when compared to the impacts of forest conversion. In particular, the “infiltration-evapotranspiration trade-off” hypothesis which predicts a net...

The present study aims to understand the salinity status of Gokak, Mudhol, Biligi and Bagalkot taluks of Ghataprabha com-mand area, Karnataka, India. The command area falls under semi-arid and drought hit areas. The samples were collected from 25 open wells and 41 bore wells during pre-monsoon and post-monsoon of the year 2007. From the chemical an...

In this paper multi sensor satellite data i.e. IRS LISS III or Landsat TM/ETM+ or OCEANSAT-1(IRS-P4) consisting of an Ocean Color Monitoring operating in eight spectral band data are used for extracting information useful to hydrological projects such as monitoring the water quality of lakes. Changes of the area extent of the lakes are estimated fr...

s u m m a r y The hydrologic effects of forest use and reforestation of degraded lands in the humid tropics has impli-cations for local and regional hydrologic services but such issues have been relatively less studied when compared to the impacts of forest conversion. In particular, the ''infiltration-evapotranspiration trade-off'' hypothesis whic...

The effects of forest degradation and use and establishment of tree-plantations on degraded or modified forest ecosystems at multi-decadal time-scales using tree-plantations on the streamflow response are less studied in the humid tropics when compared to deforestation and forest conversion to agriculture. In the Western Ghats of India (Uttar Kanna...

Morphometric, landform and topography plays an important role in understanding the hydrological response of any watershed. In the present paper authors have carried out a study on adjacent watersheds namely Bennihalla and Bedthi located in the parts of Dharwad district. The flow in these is in opposite direction. Bedthi watershed falls in Malnad re...

Significant efforts have been made in the past two decades, on field measurement of soil physical properties and on the development of models. The principle feature of field soils is their structural and compositional variability over a period of time. Time dependent variability in physical properties results in errors, while modeling solute transp...

The planning and management of land and water resources has attained a significant position in the field of research due to increased growth of population and rapid industrialization. The quantitative analysis of watershed is being felt necessary to identify and evaluate the available water resources and its time variance. Each watershed has a numb...

The studies related to assessment of groundwater quality of Gokak, Mudhol Biligi and Bagalkot taluks of Ghataprabha command area, Belgaum District, Karnataka (India) were carried out during the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon seasons to evaluate its suitability for domestic and irrigation purpose. The samples were collected from 42 locations (includin...

The objective of this study is to apply and test a simple parametric water balance model for prediction of soil moisture regime in the presence of vegetation. The intention was to evaluate the differences in model parameterization and performance when applied to small watersheds under three different types of land covers (Acacia, degraded forest an...

Belgaum city is a developmental hub of Karnataka State in India. In the recent time, the Government of Karnataka has planned to set up many processing industries in the vicinity of Belgaum to meet the growing needs of the region and to ease out the pressure on the already existing industrial hubs in Karnataka State. Ghataprabha, a tributary of rive...

Knowledge of soil water fluxes is essential in hydrologic studies related to infiltration, runoff, ground water recharge and water uptake by vegetation. Previous studies have investigated the role played by soil and atmospheric factors on soil water fluxes in the unsaturated zone, but few studies have investigated the role played by vegetation or l...

An understanding of the soil moisture variability is necessary to characterize the linkages between a region’s hydrology, ecology and physiography. In the changing land use scenario of Western Ghats, India, where deforestation along with extensive afforestation with exotic species is being undertaken, there is an urgent need to evaluate the impacts...

Streams and rivers are the distinct ecosystems, supporting significant and unique biodiversity. Stream morphology, habitat diversity and water quality are a reflection of catchment characteristics such as topography, geology, soils and vegetation. Direct impacts include changes in flow regime and habitat type resulting from dams, weirs etc. loss of...

There is comparatively limited information in the humid tropics on the surface and sub-surface permeability of: (i) forests which have been impacted by multi-decades of human occupancy and (ii) forestation of land in various states of degradation. Even less is known about the dominant stormflow pathways for these respective scenarios. We sampled fi...

The mathematical catchment model, TOPMODEL, was used to simulate the hydrological behavior of a head water catchment of Kali river in Karnataka. Results indicate that the model can be used to simulate the flows on a daily time step in the moist catchment quite accurately (the efficiency of the model is 0.80 and 0.72, respectively, in calibration an...

Field experiments were carried out in dry deciduous regions of Uttara Kannada and Dharwar districts under different land covers and soil types to assess the impact of afforestation in degraded parts of the dry deciduous forests. Various hydrological parameters such as rate of infiltration, field saturated hydraulic conductivity and soil moisture re...

The imbalance between incoming and outgoing salt causes salinization of soils and sub-soils that result in increasing the salinity of stream-flows and agriculture land. This salinization is a serious environmental hazard particularly in semi-arid and arid lands. In order to estimate the magnitude of the hazard posed by salinity, it is important to...

The fluoride contamination study has been carried out in ground waters of Khanapur, Bailhongal and Saundatti taluks of Malaprabha sub basin, Belgaum district, Karnataka (India). 21 samples were collected from different locations covering shallow and deep aquifers. The samples were collected during the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon season of 1999.The...

Vembanad Lake is one of the water bodies known as a 'Ramsar site', that is, one listed in The Convention on Wetlands, signed in Ramsar, Iran, in 1971. It is a fact that, in recent years there is a threat to the major wetland ecosystems of our country. The lakes and reservoirs, all over the country without exception are in varying degree of environm...

Coastal tracts of Goa are rapidly being transformed into settlement areas. The poor water supply facilities have encouraged people to have their own source of water by digging or boring a well. During the last decade, there have been large-scale withdrawals of groundwater by builders, hotels and other tourist establishments. Though the seawater int...

The reservoir surveys carried out using the conventional equipments like theodolite, plane table, sextant, range finders, sounding rods, echo-sounders and slow moving boats etc. are time consuming and sometime it takes up to three years to complete the survey of a major reservoir like Hirakud. During such longtime of survey, the siltation pattern a...

Mass balance calculations carried out for Na, K, Ca, Mg, Cl, SO 4 and HCO 3 for the study area showed that the major source of contamination is through non-point sources. It is also observed that the river water quality during the non-monsoon season (February, 2000) almost resembles with the groundwater quality of the adjoining aquifer. However, du...

The present study aims at modelling of soil moisture movement in Barchi watershed (Karnataka) using SWIM (Soil Water Infiltration and Movement). Field and laboratory investigations were carried out to determine the saturated hydraulic conductivity at eight locations using Guelph Permeameter and soil moisture retention characteristics using the Pres...

study, comprehensive field and laboratory investigations were carried out in soils under various land covers in parts of Ghataprabha sub-basin (which includes parts of Maharashtra and Karnataka), and an attempt has been made to relate land use with the soil moisture characteristics. Soil characteristics such as particle size distribution, soil mois...

The chemical characteristics of groundwater in Malaprabha Sub-basin of Belgaum District, Karnataka have been studied during the pre-monsoon and post-monsoon seasons to evaluate the suitability of water for domestic and irrigation purpose. Twenty one groundwater samples including open and bore wells were collected and analyzed for pH, EC, TDS, carbo...

The Specter of groundwater contamination looms over industrialized, suburban, and rural areas. Due to rapid rate of urbanization and industrialization in several parts of the country resulting in several fold increase in generation of wastewater. Though domestic sewage is partly treated in some cities, in most of the cities, it is discharged withou...

A hydrochemical study of ground water of Malaprabha sub-basin, Karnataka has been carried out to examine the suitability of ground water for irrigation purpose. The values of sodium absorption ratio and sodium percentage indicate that ground water of the area fall under the category of low sodium hazard indicating no risk of sodification. The groun...

An accurate assessment of run-off through aerial rainfall is a basic concept in most of the rainfall-runoff models, particularly conceptual models which emphasis a complete water balance. The run-off measurements by gauging can only be regarded as an index of rainfall and restrict our ability to successfully model the rainfall-runoff process. To ov...