Watershed management can be generally divided into three categories: rehabilitation, protection, and improvement. Watershed rehabilitation applies to those watersheds where degradation has already occurred and erosion has been excessive.
Rehabilitation involves the regaining or recovery of forest lands, soil conservation on cultivated slopes, pasture/range, gully, road slope and landslides, and streams.
Protection of watershed as a management principle applies to a watershed where degradation is not presently serious, but has the potential to increase.
The main purpose is to protect the present status quo or to prevent future damage. Watershed improvement emphasises infrastructure and the living conditions of the inhabitants.
Principles Of Watershed Management In Agricultural Development
Watershed management can be generally divided into three categories: rehabilitation, protection, and improvement. Such classification depends on their major functions and conditions of land degradation.
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Watershed Rehabilitation For Agricultural Land Recovery
Rehabilitation work is applied to those watersheds where degradation has already occurred and erosion has been excessive.
The objective is to regain or recover watershed stability and minimise damages both on-site and off-site. Rehabilitation processes include:
1. Rehabilitation of Forest Lands: Reforestation, tree planting on bare or severely eroded areas, erosion control on logged or cut-over areas, and treatment of abandoned roads.
2. Soil Conservation on Cultivated Slopes: Terracing, ditching, proper drainage with protected waterways, agronomic conservation practices like mulching, minimum tillage, cover cropping, and composting.
3. Pasture/Range Rehabilitation: Reseeding, replanting, proper fertilising, controlled grazing, and rotational grazing.
4. Gully, Road Slope And Landslides Rehabilitation: Regrading and revegetation, check dams, retaining walls, wattling and staking, hydroseeding, and surface/subsurface drainage.
5. Rehabilitation of Streams: Check dams, debris dams, submerged dams, training dikes, jetties, riprap, and bank revegetation.
6. Mined-Out Area Rehabilitation: Regrading and reseeding, mining tail stabilisation, debris-arresting structures, and sediment ponds.
Watershed Protection To Prevent Future Agricultural Degradation
Watershed protection usually applies to a watershed where degradation is not yet serious but may worsen if not managed. The main aim is to maintain current conditions and prevent future damage. Protection is often more cost-effective than rehabilitation.
1. Protection of Forest and Forest Lands: Fire prevention and control, prevention of illegal cutting and squatting, and insect/disease control.
2. Protection of Cultivated Slopes: Applying appropriate land use methods, land classification techniques, soil and fertility management, and maintaining conservation structures.
3. Protection of Roads: Safeguarding road surfaces, maintaining road ditches and drainage, cleaning landslips, and managing vegetation along slopes.
4. Protection of Pasture/Range Lands: Fencing, deferred grazing, stall feeding or zero-grazing, cattle feed-lot management, and wildlife protection.
5. Protection of Streams: Creating stream protection belts, bank protection, and clearing of channels.
6. Downstream Protection: Building flood-retarding structures, debris dams, sediment ponds, revetments, and levees.
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Watershed Improvement To Support Agricultural Infrastructure And Resources
Watershed improvement focuses on enhancing water and infrastructure resources. It is divided into two categories:
1. For Water Resource Improvement: Management of phreatophytes and wetlands, vegetation conversion, water quality monitoring, pollution and pesticide control.
2. For Infrastructure Development: Constructing new roads, upgrading old ones, improving domestic water supply, providing small irrigation schemes, promoting affordable energy and fuelwood sources, and upgrading housing facilities.
Some Important Principles Of Agricultural Watershed Management
1. Utilising the land according to its capability.
2. Putting adequate vegetal cover on the soil during the rainy season.
3. Conserving as much rainwater as possible at the place where it falls.
4. Drawing out excess water safely and diverting it to storage ponds for future use.
5. Avoiding gully formation and placing checks at intervals to control erosion and recharge groundwater.
6. Increasing cropping intensity through intercropping and sequential cropping.
7. Safe utilisation of marginal lands using alternate land use systems.
8. Ensuring the sustainability of ecosystems involving man, animals, plants, land, and water over time.
9. Maximising total income from dynamic interactions between resources (e.g. crop-livestock-tree-labour systems).
10. Maximising productivity per article area, per article time, and per article of water.
Watershed management principles involve using land according to its capacity, ensuring vegetative cover, managing excess water and flow velocity, preventing gully formation, boosting cropping intensity, and promoting ecosystem sustainability. These principles help protect and improve agricultural land and water resources for long-term productivity.
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