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Are Artificial Barrages Necessary to Prevent Saline Incursion? A Modelling Approach to Restore the Healthy Ecosystem of the Vembanad Lake

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Abstract

The Thanneermukkom Bund was constructed to prevent salt water intrusion in the low lying areas of the Kuttanad region which increase the paddy cultivation twice in a year. Without it, paddy cultivation would be limited to once a year. This barrier has created many adverse environmental effects such as the proliferation of aquatic weeds, pollution accumulation and deterioration in fishery catch. Thus, it became imperative to manage the salt intrusion in the upstream regions of the Vembanad Lake without impairing the natural flushing. We have implemented a well-validated 3-dimensional Finite Volume Community Ocean model with an accuracy of greater than 90% in tides, greater than 80% in currents and greater than 90% in salinity for the sustainable management of Vembanad Lake. Several model experiments/runs were conducted with varying discharges to obtain less than 2 PSU (freshwater) south of the barrage if the barrage was open. The model results revealed that 20 m3/s of cumulative discharge from southern rivers could overwhelm the salinity intrusion to the south of the barrage. While incorporating the influx from Muvattupuza river, the minimum cumulative discharge from the southern rivers was reduced to 15 m3/s.

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Data Availability

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

Code Availability

Codes are available from the corresponding author on request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Director of NIO, Goa, and the Scientist-in-Charge of NIO, Cochin, for the encouragement and support. We are grateful to Dr A. C. Anil, Project Leader, OCEAN FINDER (PSC 0105) for financial support. We acknowledge ICMAM, Chennai (Ministry of Earth Sciences, India), Naval Research Board (NRB) and CSIR-NIO (Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, India) for the financial support to carry out this study. The fourth author acknowledges the Department of Science and Technology WOS-A scheme (GAP 2908) for funding the research. FVCOM development team members in the Marine Ecosystem Dynamics and Modelling Laboratory, School of Marine Science and Technology, UMASSD for providing the FVCOM source code.

Funding

This study was partially funded by the Naval Research Board (GAP3168) and the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, India (PSC0105).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CSIR- National Institute of Oceanography, Regional Center, Kochi, India

    Sebin John, C. Revichandran, K. R. Muraleedharan, G. Seena, S. Guatham, B. Srijith & S. Abdul Azeez

  2. Bharathidasan University, Tamil Nadu, Tiruchirappalli, 620 024, India

    Sebin John & G. Seena

  3. CSIR- National Institute of Oceanography, Head Quarters, Goa, India

    S. Guatham

  4. Plymouth Marine Laboratory, Plymouth, PL1 3DH, UK

    Pierre Cazenave

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  1. Sebin John
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Contributions

Conceptualisation, RC, SJ and MKR; supervision, KRM and CR; modelling, SJ, MKR, AAS, SG, SB and PWC; writing—original draft, SJ; writing—review & editing, KRM, CR, SAA and GS. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to K. R. Muraleedharan.

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Highlights

• Saline water incursion to the paddy fields during lean discharge period affects yield and number of crops in a year.

• Construction of barrage resulted in the accumulation of pollutants in the stagnant water, became a hotspot of vector and waterborne diseases.

• Numerical model simulations showed an optimum discharge of 15 m3/s which can prevent saline incursion to the paddy field.

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John, S., Revichandran, C., Muraleedharan, K.R. et al. Are Artificial Barrages Necessary to Prevent Saline Incursion? A Modelling Approach to Restore the Healthy Ecosystem of the Vembanad Lake. Environ Model Assess 27, 791–816 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10666-022-09832-7

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