On-Farm Balancing Reservoir Design on the Basis of Canal Water Availability and Ground Water Quality

Abstract

Balancing reservoir is an intermediate water storage tank between the watercourse and the farm. Even in high rainfall areas, agriculture is not sustainable in the absence of water storage structures. Inflow components i.e. water availability of canal water, groundwater and rainfall occurrence over the balancing reservoir. The outflow components mainly water requirements for crops and evaporation from surface area of water balancing reservoir, balance the water storage capacity that mitigates the water demand of the crops and on the basis of balancing components deciding the design of water balancing reservoir. A comparative analysis reveals that the part of this capacity results from a very significant development of balancing reservoir (particularly in the smaller range of sizes) in the time interval, probably as a response to rapidly declining canal supplies. The rainfall trend analysis shows that the rainfall occurrence at probability at 50% chance is 370.8 mm which occurs once at two years of recurrence interval that shows the occurrence of surface as well as subsurface water to the study areas. A fundamental implication is that field ‘losses’ such as seepage and percolation do not necessary to represent losses at a larger scale.