Abstract:
Pakistan is situated in the watershed of Indus river having 154 million acre feet annual run off. The Indus river not only serves as the lifeline of the country’s agriculture but also capable as power machine of Pakistan. Indus has provided the world’s oldest and largest canal Irrigation system to the country coupled with production potential of more than 50,000MW cheap electricity. Pakistan is water scarce country i.e. less than 1000m3 per capita water resources and contrarily has suffered from the world’s worst flood disaster in 2010. This situation warrants management of water resources of the country, specially the watershed of river Indus. The territory of almost entire area of Pakistan constitute watershed of river Indus. The flow of Indus is trans-country and runs throughout its length of more than 1700km from northern high peaks to Arabian Sea in the south. This provides maximum opportunity for irrigating the plains situated in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Balochistan and Sindh while flowing from north to south. The precipitation received in the catchments of Indus is in the form of snowfall during December to March and the monsoon rain during the summer. The precipitation received both in the form of winter snowfall and monsoon rains is almost of equal quantity. The snowfall occurs at the extreme north in Mansehra, Swat, Upper Dir, Chitral, Indus Kohistan districts and the province of Gilgit Baltistan. The monsoon precipitation is observed in south to the snowfall areas, overlapping some of the snowfall areas in the catchment of river Indus. When the snow accumulated during the winter in the extreme north of the country melts during the summer, about half million cusecs water is produced in Indus river. The water resulted from the snow melting on its way flowing towards south, joins the runoff water of the same quantity received through monsoon rains in the low lying areas during these months and thus the quantity of water is doubled in the Indus Basin. The result is thus floods of more than a million cusecs as experienced in 2010. This unfortunate phenomenon is a matter of routine in our country with slight fluctuation in the intensity of floods every year. In the months of June and July, we witness floods and its resultant devastations and the havoc played with our crops and economy. Likewise, from October till February of the next year we face acute water shortage for our crops irrigation. The floods during the summer months not only destroy life and property but also result in loss of valuable water that could be stored for crops during water shortage periods. Pakistan is an agricultural country having 70% population dependent upon agriculture with non-significant water storage capacity to meet its agricultural needs.
Page(s):
1-18
DOI:
DOI not available
Published:
Journal: Pakistan Journal of Forestry, Volume: 62, Issue: 1, Year: 2012