Lead PIs

Dr Wouter Buytaert, Imperial College London, UK

Prof Pradeep Mujumdar, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

Indo-UK Partners

British Geological Survey, UK

University of Reading, UK

Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India 

Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, India

UNESCO

Start and End Date

January 2012 - July 2016

Funders

UKRI-Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), UK

Ministry of Earth Science, GoI

Summary of Project

The Ganges Basin is one of the most intensely populated areas of the world, and plays a major role in India’s socioeconomic wellbeing. The region has experienced significant land use change and water resource exploitation, creating important scientific research questions to understand, quantify and predict the availability of water resources under changing conditions..  This project aimed to investigate the extent to which extensive large scale land use change and groundwater depletion, which has taken place across the region, has fed back to hydrology and climate systems on a basin scale. It was the first study to combine both climate impacts on hydrological regime and hydrological feedbacks to climate. The study area also provides a unique case of a large scale river system dominated by groundwater resources.

The project has produced an improved representation of the study environment, and the interactions between groundwater, land surface and climate, as well as incorporating the important roles provided by humans. The suite of modelling tools and developed data sets will allow for improved water resource management capabilities across the region.