Benchmarking the Impact of Micro Watersheds of Sabarkantha and Aravalli Districts of Gujarat, India

Abstract

Background: An integrated watershed management approach adopted in the recent decade caters to the management of natural resources and the overall economic improvement of the region. Watershed projects need to be evaluated after implementation to know the effectiveness of programmes on rural economic enhancement of beneficiaries. Methods: The present study describes the identification of impact indicators that play the important role in the measurement of watershed performance. The impact of micro watersheds was calculated on hydrological, agricultural, social and economic parameters in study area. To examine this impact, the WPBI (Watershed Performance Benchmarking Index) was designed from the evaluation of 10 impact indicators for these parameters based on Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The calculated WPBI was then applied with multiple linear regression to find the relationship coefficients for estimating the regression WPBI. Comparing both WPBI values, the difference in WPBI was calculated for validation of regression model. Result: The results of the analysis indicate that the changing of impact values of these 10 indicators has a significant impact on WPBI. Based on the impact indicators and WPBI, the watershed projects were benchmarked to compare the effectiveness of implementation of watershed projects under different watershed schemes.