Assessment of Water Quality in Indravati Sub-basin Using Arcswat

Indravati River, a northern tributary of Godavari River, has a catchment area of 44,153 km(2) and is shared by Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Maharashtra, and Telangana states of India. It is one of the major river basins for human and ecological needs, and it supports people through agriculture. However, due to rising nutrient toxicity from excessive agricultural and industrial runoff, a hydrological and water quality model is essential to access streamflow and nutrient loadings and provides water management scenarios to reduce nutrient toxicity. The current study is focused on the development of a water quality model to simulate nitrates and ammonium ion loadings for the Indravati watershed for the period 2000-2012 using the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) and for performing Global Sensitivity analysis using SUFI-2 algorithm on SWAT-CUP for assessing the most sensitive parameters which affect the model's efficiency. Statistical performance criteria using R-2 and Nash-Sutcliffe Efficiency (NSE) were 0.74 and 0.71 and 0.71 and 0.69 for NO3- and NH4+ loadings, respectively. This study has revealed that CN2, GW_DELAY, CH_N2, ESCO, and GW_REVAP are the most significant parameters affecting the streamflow and N_UPDIS, RCN, SOL_NO3, and CH_ONCO_BSN are the most significant parameters affecting the nutrient loadings of Indravati River basin. There had not been any study of this type existed on this Indravati River basin and SWAT is used as it provides a flexible structure that allows finding solutions for different water resources, land management, and water pollution problems. The findings of this study would aid in managing land and water resources sustainably for future purposes.