Assessment of Groundwater Sustainability and Identifying Factors Inducing Groundwater Depletion in India

Abstract

The alarming decline in groundwater (GW) storage threatens the sustainable development of the water‐energy‐food linkages of a country. India has experienced severe dry spells during the years 2002, 2004, 2009, and 2012. However, the relative contribution of factors affecting GW depletion (such as variability in precipitation rate and groundwater extraction) still remains unknown. Here, we first evaluate the current GW condition by implementing reliability, resilience, and vulnerability analysis on the 5,988 monitoring well observations spanning over a period of two decades. Our study further improves the existing studies by isolating the quantity of GW depletion due to precipitation and nonprecipitation (GW extraction) factors using a multivariate regression model. Our study indicates that the nonprecipitation factor is most responsible for GW depletion in North India at a rate of 3.5 cm per year.

Assessment of regional water demand for coal-based power plants in India: exploring its regional impact on other cross-sectoral water stress

“…On the other hand, population growth and its need for industrial development leading to large increasing trends in regional emissions of precursors to sulfate aerosols and black carbon caused the failure of the Indian monsoon (Undorf et al, 2018). This situation resulted low availability of fresh surface water which leads to the sectoral dependency on groundwater due to which groundwater is overexploited in most of the region especially in northern region where groundwater table decreases by 3.5 cm annually (Nair & Indu, 2021).…”

Benchmark worst droughts during the summer monsoon in India

“…On the other hand, failure of the summer monsoon during July often results in delayed sowing of Kharif crops, especially in the rain-fed agricultural regions [2,9]. The rainfall deficit in July poses tremendous pressure on groundwater in irrigation-intensive areas [10][11][12]. Excessive groundwater pumping during droughts can have a double whammy of less recharge and more abstraction, eventually leading to groundwater depletion [10].…”

Growing rice (Oryza sativa L.) in the northern Gangetic plains of India. How suitable are they? A GIS-based multi-criteria analysis

“…Groundwater is mainly pumped out through pumps connected through borewells. Recent studies suggest that due to overexploitation of groundwater and less recharge of groundwater through rains, there has been alarming depletion of groundwater [1][2][3][4]. The reserves left will sustain us for less than a decade ultimately resulting to find an alternative crop to grow in this region [5].…”