Kamal Narain JOSHI, Retired from Institute of Development Studies, India
The present paper provides an overview of some of the affects of urbanizations on water quality as well as quantity in Jaipur urban Agglomerates, the most populous area in the state of Rajasthan (India). The study has been carried out with the help of remote sensing and GIS techniques. The City is located in the semi-Arid Zone of India. It has characterized by high temperature, low rainfall and mild winter.
It was found that increasing anthropogenic activities like infrastructure development, industrial development and other urban development have made negative impact on ground and surface water sources in the vicinity of urban area. On the other hand shift in rainfall has aggravated the problem. The study result shows that out of 518 rivulets originates from hills ranges surrounded the urban area, 113 1st order 37 second order and 10 are of third order stream are blocked or filled for the construction purpose due to expansion of city. This has resulted in dried up of seven fresh water sources which was supplying drinking water to the urbanites once. The diverted water of these streams creates flood in street of urban areas.
Second important observation is on water recharge zone. About 791 Tube-wells and 325 Dug-wells which have come in the heart of the city have been dried. The ground water level has gone down by 15 to 20 meters. In peri-urban area the ground water level has gone down ranging from 2 to 7 meters. New colonies have opened their sewerage in the natural drainage system, which causes the pollution of surface as well as ground water.
Simultaneously climate change has its own effect. The result shows that average rainy days have decrease from 35 to 28 days in last 50 years. Again the pattern of rain fall has changed, the rainy days have not equally distributed over the monsoon season.
On the basis of this analysis some measures have been suggested to harvest the water at the local level.
Mots clés : Urbanizaztion|GIS|Anthropogenic Activities|Water Resource|Climate Change
A102772KJ