H31D-1445
Estimating Evapotranspiration Demands of Different Land Cover Using Diurnal Signals in Dry Season Stream Discharge

Wednesday, 16 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Ravinder Singh Bhalla1, Kumaran K1, V Srinivas1 and Jagdish Krishnaswamy2, (1)Foundation for Ecological Research Advocacy and Learning, Pondicherry, India, (2)Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation, Bangalore, India
Abstract:
We use a paired catchment approach to compare the dry season flows between natural grasslands and introduced plantations of black wattle (Acacia mearnsii) in the Nilgiri South range forest which lies in the southern parts of the Western Ghat mountain range in Sothern India, a global biodiversity hot-spot.
Our results show that land use conversion from grasslands to wattle has increased ET by 40.97mm which is to the order of 60% during the period of the study (table 1). This has immediate relevance for dry season flows in the region. Nilgiris provide 40% of the total hydro-power generation for the state of Tamil Nadu and these streams sustain biodiversity and are tributaries of the Cauvery river, the largest the state. They also highlight the potential consequences of programmes such as the National Mission for Greening India which explicitly targets conversions of 10m ha of degraded forests, scrub and grasslands to tree cover and forest.