Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966

https://doi.org/10.1007/s40808-020-00941-4

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Usage of long‑term river discharge data in water balance model

for assessment of trends in basin storages
Ankit Modi1 · Vinod Tare1 · Chiranjib Chaudhuri2

Received: 14 June 2020 / Accepted: 11 August 2020 / Published online: 18 August 2020
© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

Abstract
Unsustainable utilization of the surface–subsurface water is responsible for the rapid depletion of the earth’s land–water
storage. To assess the depletion rate, the water balance model is a universal approach, and suitable for any temporal and
spatial scale. Through this study, we demonstrate the importance of river discharge data as a significant component of water
balance model. In this regard, a water balance study is done to assess the depletion rate of basin water storage in the Ram-
ganga river basin in India using the classified-archived river discharge data along with IMD rainfall and NTSG-Global ET
dataset. The assessment has been done at three CWC hydro-meteorological sites: Moradabad, Bareilly, and Dabri. Trends
and net change in basin water storages are estimated for the 1982–2013 period. The results suggest that long-term trends for
basin water storages are declining continuously in the entire Ramganga river basin. The reasons for this decline appear to
be anthropogenic activities, and resulting climate change.

Keywords Water balance · CWC hydro-meteorological sites · Ramganga river · Global NTSG-ET dataset · IMD rainfall
data

Introduction the Aral Sea, located in Central Asia, is the example of the
consequence of anthropogenic activity and climate change
Land water storages have been severely impacted, in terms (Aladin et al. 2019; Loodin 2020). To confront these issues,
of both quality and quantity, due to intensified water with- concepts and practices such as rainwater harvesting, artificial
drawals for human needs, unsustainable practices in man- recharge of groundwater, optimization in irrigation, E-Flows
agement of the water resources, and climate changes (Döll for rivers, wetland conservation, and interlinking of rivers
et al. 2012; Ali et al. 2012; Asoka et al. 2017; de Graaf have been reported in literature but their applicability and
et al. 2019). The natural surface–subsurface water storages efficacy are much dependent on an accurate water balance
and river flows during the critical periods are declining study (Bezerra et al. 2012; Glendenning et al. 2012; Shokati
rapidly, and as a result, the ecosystems of the rivers, lakes, et al. 2020).
and wetlands are degrading continuously (Gao et al. 2012; Setting up a water balance model at any temporal and
Benjankar et al. 2012; Huntington et al. 2016; Pekel et al. spatial scale is a simple and universal approach that allows
2016; Zhan et al. 2019). According to Pekel et al. (2016), the dynamic understanding of distribution of water in vari-
natural surface water bodies covering around 90 thousand ous components and intra- and inter-system flows includ-
­km2 have disappeared globally between the years 1985 and ing stream and sub-surface flows as well as evaporation
2015, and 70% of that is in the Middle East and Central and evapotranspiration. However, the effectiveness of the
Asia. The tragic loss of surface water and biodiversity in model essentially depends on data availability for different
water balance components, e.g., river discharge, baseflow,
groundwater recharge, evapotranspiration (ET), etc. Numer-
* Vinod Tare ous water balance studies have been reported for diverse
[email protected] regions using different techniques for estimating various
1 components of a water balance model, viz. Isotopic method
Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute
of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, India (Joshi et al. 2018), Chemical method (Ahiablame et al.
2 2017), Remote sensing method (Abtew and Melesse 2012;
Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Canada

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954 Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966

Asoka et al. 2017), Lysimeter method (Scholz 2016), Bud- in using water balance models and assessing the trends in
yko approach (Sposito 2017), and distributed/semi-distrib- the basin water storages. This has been demonstrated by set-
uted models (e.g., soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) ting a water balance model and estimating trends in basin
(Arnold et al. 1998) and variable infiltration capacity (VIC) water storages for Ramganga river basin using the observed
model (Liang et al. 1994). The semi-distributed models, par- classified river discharge data, IMD rainfall data, and NTSG-
ticularly SWAT has gained a lot of popularity in recent years Global ET data at three CWC hydro-meteorological sites.
over other methods due to its robust approach. The model The factors responsible for the change in the basin water
is applied for various river basins to assess different water storages are also discussed.
balance components and to examine the impact of change in
land use-land cover (LULC), climate change, etc. (Golmo-
hammadi et al. 2017; Makwana and Tiwari 2017; Shiferaw Study area and data
et al. 2018; Shukla and Gedam 2018).
In India, a wide attention has also been paid off to water The study area comprises Ramganga river basin (longitudes
balance studies, particularly in the river basins, to assess 78°14′ E–80°08′ E and latitudes 27°07′ N–30°06′ N) which
the agriculture pumping effect, LULC effect and climate is a part of the Ganga river basin. The total basin area is
change effect (Chawla and Mujumdar 2015; Asoka et al. 22685 square kilometers and the total length of the river is
2017; Kumar et al. 2018; Anand et al. 2018a; Shah et al. 642 km of which the initial 158 km is in the Himalayan range
2019). Anand et al. (2018b) developed a basin-scale SWAT (Khan et al. 2015). The basin receives around 1000 mm/
model for entire Ganga river basin to assess the water bal- year average rainfall annually of which 80% occurs during
ance, trends and variations in the Ganga river and its tribu- mid-June to mid-September and the maximum tempera-
taries. However, Anand et al. (2018b) emphasized on the ture in the catchment ranges from 18 °C (January) to 36 °C
data availability and more technical understanding to pre- (May–June), and the minimum temperature varies between
pare a better model. Also, Kumar et al. (2016) prepared 6 °C (January) and 23 °C (July), as observed in the years
a SWAT model incorporating variable source area to pre- 1969–2013 (Pathak et al. 2018). The perennial tributaries of
dict spatially distributed surface runoff source for north- Ramganga river include Khoh, Gangan, Dhara, Pili, Phika,
west Himalayan landscape, and Shukla and Gedam (2018) Dehla, Kosi, West Baigul, Aril and East Baigul, on which
assessed the urbanization impacts on Upper Bhima River many dams and barrages are built for irrigation, industry
basin (Maharashtra, India) using the static dataset for soil and domestic purposes (India-WRIS 2014). A multipurpose
and LULC in SWAT model. In some other modeling studies, reservoir-cum-irrigation project, Kalagarh dam is built on
Long et al. (2016) highlighted the uncertainty of the GRACE the main stem of the Ramganga river near Kalagarh, which
satellite data in the assessment of groundwater depletion of transfers 535 cusecs water in the main stem of Ganga river
Northwest India aquifer. Similarly, MacDonald et al. (2016) just before Narora barrage. The major LULC is agricultural
emphasized that the true assessment for the Northwest India land (66%) followed by forest cover (28%) (Gurjar and Tare
aquifer was possible with in situ groundwater data records 2019a). The salient features of the Ramganga river basin are
instead of using the GRACE satellite data. However, it is to shown in Fig. 1.
be noticed that most of the water balance studies for Indian The daily average hydrological observations, gauge and
river basins are based on the semi-distributed model that: discharge, were collected from Central Water Commission
(1) are based on some static data (e.g., LULC), (2) are cal- (CWC) offices for different observation sites in the Ram-
ibrated-validated at few hydro-meteorological sites, some- ganga river basin. The CWC is an organization which is
times only at the outlet of the basin in lack of observed data, mainly responsible for hydro-meteorological data collec-
(3) are applied on large basin area which average out the tion in India. The observations are classified and cannot be
diversity of the regional sub-basin-scale water management shared. The other water balance components, rainfall and
parameters, and (4) lack scientific rigor in the absence of ET, were obtained from India Meteorological Department
inadequate parameter information, technical understanding, (India) and Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group
and/or uncertainty in data (Orth et al. 2015). Hence, specific (USA), respectively. The salient features of the data are
limitations/assumptions of the modeling studies need to be shown in Table 1. Precipitation grid points, ET grid points,
addressed carefully to avoid uncertainties in the estimates and CWC sites within the study area are shown in Fig. 2.
of hydrological water balance components. Further details of the data are given in “Appendix 1”.
Although the semi-distributed models are set up to get For the present study, the study area has been divided
some insight on hydrological aspects at macro scale, lack of into three parts based on CWC sites: (1) upper part—up to
availability of observed hydrological data limits their utility. Moradabad CWC site, (2) middle part—between Moradabad
Hence, the present study is primarily focused on revealing and Bareilly CWC sites, and (3) lower part—between
the significance of availability of observations on river flows Bareilly and Dabri CWC sites (refer Table 2).

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Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966 955

Ramganga R.
Kosi R.
1
Khoh 2
R. A 3 D E West
C
4 Gugwagad R. Baigul R.
B
G
Dhela 5 6
R.
Gangan
H 7
R. Bhakra
F 8
R.

Moradabad
ID Dam ID Barrage CWC site East
Baigul
1 Ramganga Dam A Hareoli Barrage R.

2 Afzalgarh Dam B Kho Barrage Bareilly

CWC site
3 Pili Dam C Phika Barrage
4 Tumaria Dam D Dhela Barrage
5 Baur Dam E Kosi Barrage
6 Haripura Dam F Lalpur Barrage
Dabri
7 Dhora Dam G Gola Barrage
CWC site
8 Baigul Dam H Kiccha Barrage
CWC site

Fig. 1  The Ramganga river basin

Table 1  Data used in the present study

Precipitation (rainfall) Streamflow ET

Data period 1901–2014 1971–2014 1982–2013

Format Text (converted in Excel using MATLAB© Excel HDF raster (converted in Excel using MAT-
code) LAB© code)
Source India Meteorological Department (India) Central Water Commission (India) Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group
(USA)
Resolution Spatial—1/4° × 1/4° (27.75 km × 27.75 km) Spatial—not applicable Spatial—1/12° × 1/12° (8 km × 8 km)
Temporal—daily Temporal—daily Temporal— monthly
URL http://dsp.imdpu​ne.gov.in/ http://cwc.gov.in/hydro​-meteo​rolog​ https​://www.ntsg.umt.edu/defau​lt.php
ical-obser​vatio​n

Materials and methods I − O = ΔS, (1)

The water balance model where I is the total inflow to the system; O is the total out-
flow to the system and ΔS is the change in storage in the
The basic principle for a water balance model is primarily system for a specified time interval. The water balance
based on the mass conservation, as:

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956 Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966

Fig. 2  a IMD Rainfall grids; b NTSG ET grids; and c CWC sites in different parts of the Ramganga river basin

Table 2  Three sub-divisions of the Ramganga river basin based on the lateral groundwater exiting from the adjacent boundary
CWC observation sites of the basin; and ΔSs and ΔSg are the change in water volume
Parts Area in between in the surface–subsurface water storage and groundwater
storage, respectively.
Upper part Up to Moradabad CWC​
In the present study, a lumped-type water balance equa-
Middle part Moradabad CWC and Bareilly CWC​
tion, i.e., Eq. 3 is applied to assess net yearly change in
Lower part Bareilly CWC and Dabri CWC​
basin water storage. A basin storage includes the surface
storage, soil moisture storage, and ground water storage.
In the present study area, ground water is used mainly for
equations for different systems of a river basin are—(a) for agriculture–domestic–industrial uses, and some portion of
a part of a river basin, it converted into ET and drainage that is taken into river
discharge and ET measurements. Hence, Eq. 3 represents the
P + Rin + Gin − Gout − Rout − ETs − ETg = ΔSs + ΔSG ,
change in basin water storage. A 3D diagram of the Ram-
(2) ganga river basin with different water balance components
and (b) for combined storage of surface water and soil mois- and a schematic diagram of the water balance model used in
ture, i.e., surface–subsurface storage (Zhang et al. 2001; the present study are shown in Fig. 3.
Viessman and Lewis 2012),
Computation of water balance components
P + Rin − Rout − ETs − (Rg − B) = ΔSs , (3)

where P is the precipitation; Rin is the river discharge enter- The annual volume (in MCM) for different water balance
ing to the basin; Rout is the river discharge exiting to the components is calculated to assess the annual change in
basin; ETs and ETg are the evapotranspiration from sur- surface–subsurface storage for each part of the basin. The
face–subsurface water storage and from ground water stor- annual volume of precipitation (P) and evapotranspiration
age, respectively; Rg is the groundwater recharge joining to (ET) is calculated from the gridded data. The precipita-
the water table; B is the baseflow; Gin is the lateral ground- tion/evapotranspiration grids are separated from IMD/
water entering into the adjacent boundary of basin; Gout is NTSG-gridded dataset. The annual volume of river dis-
charge entering (Rin) and exiting (Rout) to each part of the

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Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966 957

(a) (b) Notations-

: precipitation
: river discharge
entering and exiting to the
basin respectively,
: evapotranspiration from
surface-subsurface water
storage
: groundwater recharge
joining to the water table
: baseflow
: change in water volume
in the surface-subsurface
water storage
and are the lateral
groundwater entering into and
exiting from the adjacent
boundary of the basin
respectively

Fig. 3  a 3D representation of Ramganga river basin with different water balance components; b schematic representation of the water balance
model

basin are calculated from the upstream and downstream Precipitation

CWC sites. The annual volume of groundwater recharge
(R g) is assessed from annual rainfall using the rainfall For precipitation, a decreasing trend is observed for the
infiltration factor method (GEC 2017) and the annual vol- upper and lower parts of the basin; whereas, an increasing
ume of baseflow (B) is calculated from river discharge trend is shown for the middle part of the basin (refer Figs. 4,
data using the base flow separation method developed by 5, 6). Guhathakurta et al. (2015) concluded that since 1950,
Arnold et al. (1995). most of the rainfall stations in India are showing a decreas-
Further details on the methodology and results for ing trend. Similar observations were reported in some recent
the groundwater recharge and baseflow are given in studies for Northwest India, particularly foothills of the
“Appendix 2”. Annual change in combined storage of Himalaya (Ghosh et al. 2016; Viswambharan 2019). Priya-
surface–subsurface is calculated from the water balance darshi et al. (2020) also did a trend analysis for rainfall over
equation (i.e., Eq. 3) using annual values obtained for India and found a negative trend in Northern India since
different water balance components. 1971. The rainfall variability is speculated to be associated
with the climate changes (Goswami et al. 2006; Rajeevan
et al. 2008; Asoka et al. 2017) as well as with the anthropo-
genic activities (Knopf et al. 2008; Mukherjee et al. 2018).
Results and discussion
Evapotranspiration
Trend in water balance components and surface–
subsurface water storage An increasing trend is noticed in ET for the entire Ramganga
river basin (refer Figs. 4, 5, 6). The ET is a consequence of
The annual volume for different water balance com- the complex interactions of the atmospheric, meteorological,
ponents is estimated for the period of 1982–2013, and and physical processes (McVicar et al. 2012), and variation
shown in Figs. 4, 5, and 6 for the upper, middle, and in ET depends on the changes in the air temperature, solar
lower parts of the Ramganga river basin, respectively. The radiation, vapor pressure, wind speed, and aerosol concen-
nature and rate of the trend for different water balance tration. Although, significant changes in LULC impacted the
components and surface–subsurface storage are discussed ET regime, especially the conversion of the forest covers into
separately in the following sections. the agricultural land, effect of climate changes may also have

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958 Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966

12000
P Rg
10000
8000 y = -62.98x + 133225

6000
4000 y = -13.717x + 29016
2000
0
1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
5500

5000

4500
y = 22.09x - 39373 ET
4000

3500
1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
4000
Rout - Rin B
3000

2000 y = 19.181x - 36734

1000 y = 4.9871x - 9550.8

0
1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
3000
2000 ΔSS y = -85.547x + 1296
1000
0
-1000
-2000
-3000
-4000
1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
Fig. 4  Trends for water balance compartments for Upper part of the Ramganga river basin. (x-axis represents years and y-axis represents the
values in MCM)

played a role (Teuling et al. 2019). The observed increasing non-monsoon period which extends to over 300 days in a
trend of ET may be due to the combined contribution from year. This surface runoff generation is continuously increas-
the increasing trend of mean air temperature and irrigation ing due to increment in population and agricultural–indus-
for agriculture that provides more surface water to evaporate trial production and is also supported by assessment of water
(Gholkar et al. 2014; Goroshi et al. 2017). quality through the recent studies for the Ramganga river
basin (Kumar and Bahadur 2012; Gurjar and Tare 2019b;
River discharge Iqbal et al. 2019). The water transfer from the upper part of
the basin to the Ganga basin (at upstream of Narora barrage)
An increasing trend is observed for river discharge for is also responsible for water shortage in the basin (Sharma
all parts of the Ramganga basin (refer Figs. 4, 5, 6). The 2017).
primary source of the river discharge is precipitation and The other components, baseflow and groundwater
groundwater. Evidently, river discharge will increase as recharge, are the function of the river discharge and rainfall,
precipitation increases, but in the upper and lower parts of respectively, and hence follow trends similar to that of river
the basin, an increasing trend is observed in river discharge discharge and rainfall.
irrespective of the decreasing trend in the precipitation. It
is plausible that the bringing groundwater through pump- Surface–subsurface water storage
ing resulting in surface runoff (mostly as wastewater from
domestic and industrial activities or agriculture return flow) Annual change in surface–subsurface water storage is calcu-
has contributed to the river discharge, particularly during the lated using water balance Eq. 3 for the duration 1982–2013.

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Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966 959

25000
P Rg
20000
y = 13.533x - 13107
15000

10000

5000 y = 2.9475x - 2854.8

0
1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
10000
ET
9000
y = 44.855x - 81597
8000

7000

6000
1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
12000
10000 Rout - Rin B
8000
6000 y = 69.582x - 134770
4000
2000
y = 22.266x - 43127
0
1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
6000
4000 ΔSS
y = -81.585x + 1367.9
2000
0
-2000
-4000
-6000
1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
Fig. 5  Trends for water balance compartments for middle part of the Ramganga river basin. (x-axis represents years and y-axis represents the
values in MCM)

A decreasing trend is observed in storage change for all Central Asia due to human actions including river diversion,
parts of the basin. The negative trend in the storage of sur- damming, and unregulated withdrawal. The intensity for sur-
face–subsurface appears to be result of (a) negative trend in face water occurrence change was reproduced from Web Map
precipitation, (b) increasing trend in ET, and (c) increasing Tiled Services (WMTS) using the ArcGIS 10.4 for the Ram-
trend in river discharge in the basin due to excessive use of ganga river basin between two epochs (16 March 1984–31
sub-surface water. It may also be seen from Table 3 that the December 1999, and 1 January 2000–10 December 2018) and
declining trend in basin storage is primarily due to decrease is shown in Fig. 7. The occurrence change intensity has been
in annual precipitation in the upper part of the basin whereas shown in different color coding, viz. green for increased inten-
the increase in annual ET and river discharges resulting in sity, red for decreased intensity, and black for no significant
conversion of stored sub-surface water into additional dry change in the water occurrence during the 1984–2018 period.
weather flows are responsible for decline in storage for the It may be observed from Fig. 7 that the Bareilly part of the
middle and lower part of the basin. basin has many red areas which reflect that surface water is
It is also noted from Figs. 4, 5, 6 that the surface–sub- lost from the part of the basin during the period.
surface storage change was mostly positive for upper and
middle parts of the basin up to the year 1996, after that, both Correlation of change in basin water storage
parts have become water deficit whereas the lower part was with precipitation, river discharge and ET
water deficit throughout the study period.
Pekel et al. (2016) concluded that more than 70% of global The regression plots for change in surface–subsurface stor-
net permanent water loss has occurred in the Middle East and age with precipitation, ET, and river discharge are shown in

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960 Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966

8000
P Rg
6000 y = -5.4014x + 15675

4000
y = 0.2892x + 1227.9
2000

0
1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
4000
3500
3000
y = 26.747x - 50192
2500
2000
1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
6000
5000 Rout - Rin B
4000
3000 y = 19.674x - 36847
2000
y = 7.476x - 14002
1000
0
1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
2000
0
-2000
-4000
-6000
ΔSS y = -44.58x - 1058.9
-8000
-10000
1985

1986

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013
Fig. 6  Trends for water balance compartments for lower part of the Ramganga river basin. (x-axis represents years and y-axis represents the val-
ues in MCM)

Table 3  Rate of change for different water balance compartments in and agricultural land. The correlation of basin water stor-
Ramganga river basin (all values are in MCM/year) age with ET is reasonably good but the correlation with
P ET Rout−Rin ΔSs river discharge is very poor that indicates the depletion in
the storage is inversely related to the ET changes and is
Upper part − 63 22 19 − 85 negligibly reflected in changes in river flows.
Middle part 13 45 70 − 81 Further, for the middle part of the basin, none of the
Lower part −5 27 20 − 45 parameters shows a strong correlation with the basin water
storage as shown in Fig. 8. The correlation of basin water
storage is significant with the precipitation and ET but
Fig. 8 in ‘a’ part, ‘b’ part, and ‘c’ part respectively for upper, not with the river flows. It indicates that the changes in
middle, and lower parts of the basin. the rainfall and ET are responsible for the change in basin
For the upper part of the basin, a strong positive cor- water storage.
relation is found between the annual change in basin water The lower part of the basin shows a good inverse rela-
storage and annual precipitation (refer to Fig. 8). It may tionship with the river flows and indicates that basin
be inferred that the decline in the dense forest area in water storage is drained out through the river flows.
the upper part of the basin (Gurjar and Tare 2019a) was The trend in river flows is observed increasing which
responsible for the decrease in the annual precipitation is essentially due to the anthropogenic activities as the
and consequently in basin water storage. It is also noted rainfall is declining. It is evident that excessive amount of
from Table 4 that the vast area of the upper part of the groundwater is utilized in the lower part of the basin for
basin is converted from dense forest area to open forest the agriculture–industry requirement, and lost as ET and

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Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966 961

Fig. 7  The surface water change between two epochs during the 1984–2018 (source: EC JRC/Google)

surface runoff (mostly during the non-monsoon period) Conclusion

through river flows (Shah et al. 2019).
The assessment of the spatio-temporal trend of basin water
budget is the key step for effective surface water manage-
Net change in basin water storage ment for a river basin. In the present study, the annual
precipitation, ET, and river discharge were examined to
Assessing the net change of storage on an annual basis assess the change in basin water storage in the Ramganga
does not truly reflect the change in storage as rainfall pat- river basin between the years 1982 and 2013. The follow-
terns are cyclic. Hence, the net loss/gain of basin water ing conclusion can be drawn from the present study:
storage is assessed on the basis of the 5-year average. The
average change in water storage for 1982–1986 (for the • The basin water storage is declining continuously for
lower part it is 1985–1989) and for 2009–2013 are shown the entire Ramganga river basin.
in Table 5. The net change is calculated as a difference • The storage depletion in the upper part of the basin
between averaged water storages during the two five-year appears to be due to reduction in the dense forest area,
periods. It is seen from Table 5, that the basin water has and perhaps consequent depletion in precipitation.
been lost drastically in the upper part of the basin and • The depletion in the precipitation and increment of the
somewhat from the middle and lower part of the basin. A agricultural irrigation appear to be the main reasons for
rate of net storage change on the basis of the catchment the storage depletion in the middle part of the basin.
area is also calculated and found that the depletion rate • In the lower part of the basin, the additional drain-
was highest for the upper part of the basin; whereas, it age through increased river flows during non-monsoon
was lesser and equal for the middle–lower parts of the period as domestic–industrial wastewater and increased
basin. The results of the present study are comparative
to the results obtained by Srivastava and Dikshit (2019).

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962 Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966

Fig. 8  Regression plots for upper, middle and lower parts of the Ram- part, ET for ‘b’ part and river discharge for ‘c’ part in MCM. The
ganga river basin. The y-axis in the figures represent the surface–sub- subscripts ‘u’, ‘m’ and ‘l’ in the ‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’ are the upper part,
surface storage in MCM and x-axis represents precipitation for ‘a’ middle part and lower part, respectively

Table 4  Net change (­ km2) Basin parts (total area, ­km2) Agriculture Dense forest Open forest Water
and % change in LULC over
Ramganga river basin between Net % Net % Net % Net %
1970 and 2013 (reproduced
from Gurjar and Tare (2019a)) Upper part (6756) 301 4.5 − 552 − 8.2 333 4.9 60 0.9
Middle part (11402) 392 3.4 − 42 − 0.4 − 215 − 1.9 − 21 − 0.2
Lower part (3738) 173 4.6 − 20 − 0.5 10 0.3 − 38 − 1.0

Table 5  Net change in surface–subsurface water storage ET due to increased irrigation are the major factors for
Average ΔSs (MCM) Net change Net change the storage depletion.
(MCM) (MCM/ • Overall, the anthropogenic activities and climatic change
1982–1986 2009–2013 km2) based on anthropogenic activities appear to be responsi-
ble for the basin water storage depletion in the Ramganga
Upper part 1441 − 198 − 1638 − 0.24
river basin.
Middle part 2044 433 − 1611 − 0.14
• The loss rate is high for the upper part of the basin in
Lower part − 1669a − 911 − 758 − 0.14
comparison to the middle-lower part of the basin. It indi-
a
The value is calculated for 1985−1989 period cates that the precipitation change was more responsible

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Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966 963

for the storage depletion in comparison to the use for to extract data from the netCDF raster to gridded data for the
agriculture–domestic–industrial activities. Overall, the calculation of ET for each part of the basin. The NTSG-ET
anthropogenic effects appear to dominate loss of basin product is applied globally for major river basins and proved
water storage. to be a very useful product in the assessment of water balance
studies (Liu et al. 2016; Wang et al. 2018; Bai and Liu 2018)
These results hold considerable potential for investigat- and to compare with other ET models (Anayah and Kaluar-
ing anthropogenic impacts and climate change induced by achchi 2019). However, this product is calibrated by few point
anthropogenic effects on the terrestrial water storage over observations and uses satellite field data, which may suffer
any region. Our analysis shows that with simple analyti- from a limitation of saturating signals at very high leaf areas
cal tools and good quality data we can gain insight into the and from limited observations during cloudy seasons (Huete
nature of changes in terrestrial water storage over any region. et al. 2002).
This research will help many researchers focused on water
resources of this area as well as governing bodies to devise A.3. River discharge (R)
future water use protocols.
The daily averaged river discharge data are collected from the
Acknowledgements The financial support for this study was received Central Water Commission (CWC) which is a Government
from Ganga, NMCG, Department of Water Resources, River Develop-
ment & Ganga Rejuvenation, Ministry of Jal Shakti, India.
of India organization. The CWC collates the gauge data three
times a day (0800 h, 1300 h, and 1800 h) in the non-monsoon
period and hourly in the monsoon period. The discharge is
computed using direct methods like the area-velocity method
Appendix 1 (current meter method, float method) and indirect methods like
the slope-area method (Modi et al. 2020). The discharge data
A.1. Precipitation data (P) are categorized as classified, and the same cannot be repro-
duced here (Ministry of Water Resources, GoI, 2013).
The precipitation data are collected from the India Mete-
orological Department (IMD) which is an agency under
the Ministry of Earth Science, Government of India. IMD Appendix 2
prepared a latest daily gridded rainfall dataset of 0.25° reso-
lution for the period of 1901–2015 using 6955 rain gauge A.1. Groundwater recharge (Rg)
stations. These stations include 547 IMD observatory sta-
tions, 494 hydro-meteorology observatories, and 74 agro- Groundwater recharge (GWR) is the water that arrives at the
met observatories. The Inverse Distance Weighted interpo- water table and increases the groundwater storage. In India,
lation scheme is applied to prepare the gridded data (Pai GWR mainly occurs due to precipitation in Monsoon sea-
et al. 2014). son (Mid-June to Mid-October). The assessment of GWR is
important in the calculation of the change in a combined stor-
age of surface–subsurface water. In hard rock areas, the hydro-
A.2. Evapotranspiration data (ET)
geological and hydrological units normally coincide, which
may not be the case in alluvial areas where the aquifers trav-
The Evapotranspiration (ET) data are collected from the
erse the basin boundaries. The Groundwater Estimation Com-
Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group (NTSG) which
mittee report, documented by the Central Groundwater Board
is a research center of the University of Montana. The NTSG
(CGWB-India), recommends two methods for groundwater
developed a satellite remote sensing-based ET algorithm to
recharge from rainfall (GEC 2017). One method is ground-
evaluate a continuous global record of land surface ET of
water level fluctuation and specific yield method, in which
a period from 1982 to 2013 (Zhang et al. 2010). The data
the recharge is estimated on the basis of groundwater level
incorporate open water evaporation (using Priestley–Taylor
fluctuation and specific yield approach. The second method is
approach), canopy transpiration and soil evaporation (using
the Rainfall infiltration factor method. The rainfall infiltration
modified Penman–Monteith method) based on the Moder-
factor for Alluvium principal aquifer is recommended as 22%.
ate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data,
The formula recommended by GEC (2017) is as,
meteorological observations, and satellite-based vegetation
parameters (Zhang et al. 2010). Monthly estimations of ET Rrf = RFIF × A × (R − a), (4)
are available for the period 1982–2013 in the netCDF (network
Common Data Form) at a resolution of 1/12° and is down- where Rrf, rainfall recharge in ham; A, area in hectares;
loaded from the NTSG data portal (refer: https​://www.ntsg. RFIF, rainfall infiltration factor; R, rainfall in mm; a, mini-
umt.edu/proje​ct/globa​l-et.php). A MATLAB script is written mum threshold value above which rainfall induces ground

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964 Modeling Earth Systems and Environment (2021) 7:953–966

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