Article Details

Geographical Review of Water Resource its Appraisal, Conservation Management and Planning: A Case Study of East Champaran District | Original Article

Manoranjan Rajak*, in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education | Multidisciplinary Academic Research

ABSTRACT:

Ground water is a precious and the most widely distributed resource of the earth and unlike any other mineral resource, it gets its annual replenishment from the meteoric precipitation. The world’s total water resources are estimated at 1.37 × 108 million ha-m. In all global water supplies approximately 97.2 percent is liquid water primarily in seas, and just 2.8 percent is accessible as fresh water at any time on the planet earth. Out of this 2.8 percent, approximately 2.2 percent is accessible as surface water and 0.6 percent as ground water. Even out of this 2.2 percent of sea water, 2.15 percent is fresh water in glaciers and icecaps and only of the order of 0.01 (1.36 × 104 M ha-m) is available in lakes and reservoirs, and 0.0001 in streams the remaining being in other forms -0.001 as water vapour in atmosphere, and 0.002 as soil moisture in the top 0.6 m. Out of 0.6 of stored ground water, only about 0.3 (41.1 × 104 M ha-m) can be economically extracted with the present drilling technology, the remaining being unavailable as it is situated below a depth of 800 m. Land water is also the world's main reservoir of fresh water, with the exception of polar ice caps and glaciers. The volume of ground water in both inland lakes and reservoirs is more than 30x from the ground surface and about 3000x from stream channels, at any one time. Today about a quarter of the world 's water is derived from groundwater supplies. Agriculture is the main water user, responsible for 80 of all usage. Approximately 1000 tons of water are required to develop one ton of grain and 2000 tons of rice. Pet breeding and fishing all need lots of water. About 15 of world agricultural land is irrigated. The present irrigated area in India is 60 million hectares (M ha) of which about 40 is from ground water.