Assessment of Weekly Water Surplus/Deficit in the Ahmednagar District of Maharashtra, India

Climate change and its impact on water resources are one of the most important issues affecting world agriculture at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The last four decades have witnessed extensive research concerning climatic variability and trends of climatic parameters in different regions and for the different time scale. Climatic water supply, as well as demand, was changed in different regions of the world affect the food and nutritional security of the region. Crop water requirement was also affected by the variation of meteorological parameters under the conditions of climate change. The present study was undertaken to evaluate tehsil-wise weekly water surplus/deficit availability during the rainy season (June to October) in the Ahmednagar district for a period of 2001 to 2016. Water surplus and the deficit were estimated by weekly rainfall and reference crop evapotranspiration. Results of the study revealed that weekly water availability was very meagre during the rainy season in the Panrner nd Kopargaon tehsil. A number of surplus weeks in this two tehsil were only four weeks which is less than 20 per cent weeks. It was observed that in the Akole tehsil highest 12 (50%) weeks were surplus followed by 9 weeks in Jamkhed tehsil. Remaining tehsils had existed water surplus only during 6 to 8 number of weeks in the district. In the Ahmednagar district rainfall is not sufficient to fulfil crop water requirement and needs supplemental irrigation facility to get maximum returns. Some of the weeks are showing water surplus in the many tehsils of the district, but its probability is less than 50 percent which is not assured.