In this project, we are investigating how water is stored in, and moves through, a Himalayan river system (the inter-linked Beas and Sutjej catchments) in northern India at daily to decadal timescales and will use the resulting insights to develop and test a robust model of the whole system that can be used to inform current and future decision making to support the sustainable development and management of the region’s water resources.

A combination of state-of-the-art modelling, field studies, satellite-based remote sensing and observation will be developed to improve the process-based understanding of Himalayan water resources availability and quality. Finally, a ‘whole-system’ framework underpinned by these detailed process modelling outcomes will be built using the Water Evaluation And Planning (WEAP) software system.

The whole system model will be used to understand how climate change, land-use change and population growth affect water resources, so as to inform decision-making that supports India’s water resources development and long-term socio-economic growth.

Our objectives

• Develop process based models using a combination of observations, field studies, satellite-based remote sensing and state of art-modelling.
• Develop a validated parsimonious whole system river basin model by integrating the detailed, subsystem models;
• Use the whole-system model to test the impact of climate and anthropogenic changes on India Himalayas water resources sufficiency;
• Implement relevant impact plan activities to facilitate knowledge exchange that ensures stakeholder-relevance of the research outputs.

Consortium

The project involves collaboration between internationally-leading scientists at 4 Indian institutions (IIT-Roorkee; NIT-Hamirpur, NIH-Roorkee and the IISc-Bangalore), 2 UK Universities (Heriot-Watt and Cranfield) and one British Research Institute (the British Antarctic Survey).