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Assessment of Environmental Water Demands (EWD) of Forests for Two Distinct Indian Ecosystems

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Abstract

Sustainable use of water and land resources requires that these scarce resources be appropriately allocated among various competing human activities. Worldwide, there is a realization now that sustainable river basin management should be accorded the highest priority, because it deals not only with technical, but also with ecological and socioeconomic aspects, and thus calls for a multidisciplinary and integrated approach. However, most of the policy and planning documents have either remained silent, or have made only implicit reference to the importance of environmental water demand (EWD) and its quantification. Therefore, in the light of its importance, a methodology has been evolved in this article for quantifying EWD for various forested areas in two distinctly different Indian river basins: Brahmani (humid zone) and Sabarmati (dry zone). The article analyzes and discusses EWD estimates at three different spatial levels: river basins, states, and districts within them, and finally presents a comparative analysis of all these results. Findings of the present study will be immensely useful in understanding various ecological issues connected with water resource projects and proposals in these river basins.

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Acknowledgments

Part of the present study was financially supported by International Commission on Irrigation and Drainage (ICID). The authors wish to thank various participants of India Basin Consultations for Country Policy Support Programme (IBC-CPSP) held at Bhubaneshwar (16–17 January, 2003), Orissa and Ahmedabad (23–24 January, 2003), Gujarat for their valuable suggestions. They also thank the anonymous reviewers, whose valuable comments have helped immensely in bringing the paper to the present form.

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Correspondence to Jai Shanker Pandey.

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Pandey, J.S., Devotta, S. Assessment of Environmental Water Demands (EWD) of Forests for Two Distinct Indian Ecosystems. Environmental Management 37, 141–152 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00267-004-0183-x

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