Precision conservation of natural resources for sustainable development

Soil & Water are the most important limiting factors in enhancing the agricultural production. Effective rainwater management is vital to increase and stabilize crop yields. The objective of the present study is to effectively conserve the soil & water by estimating the spatial distribution of runoff for the most probable rainfall events for the area and considering the structures/earth work etc. already made in the catchments. A rainfall and runoff model has been developed treating the area as a network of square grid cells of 10 m². In the present study United States Department of Agriculture, Soil Conservation Service Curve Number method has been used for estimating the runoff in each cell. Finally, continuous grid maps have been generated to query at each cell: (1) the catchment´s area in Hectares, (2) the runoff quantities in thousands of cubic meters for various events, (3) the balance runoff after interception in thousands of cubic meters, (4) the weighted curve number for reference to read runoff from tables if required, (5) the peak rate of runoff in cumec. Hard copies are prepared for the same, providing data at selected points. In this paper, it is demonstrated that, we can effectively utilize the facilities offered by GIS to go for precision conservation and to visualize through simulations to the rural population interactively to sensitize on conservation and agronomics