Hydro-ecological Assessment of Environmental Flows for Satluj River

Abstract

The present study was envisaged to estimate environmental flows (EFs) of Satluj river with limited ecological information. For this study, Satluj river basin up to Kasol gauging site has been considered and the EF assessment has been done at three locations viz. Rampur, Suni, and Kasol. The daily discharges of Satluj river at these sites for the years 1964–2011 were used for the analysis. The Global Environmental Flow Calculator (GEFC) developed by Smakhtin and Anputhas (An assessment of environmental flow requirements of Indian river basins p. 42, 2006); Smakhtin and Erivagama (2008) was used to estimate the EFs for different Environmental Management Classes (EMCs). The assessment of ecological status of the river in terms of EMC has been carried out as prescribed by Smakhtin et al. (Developing procedures for assessment of ecological status of Indian river basins in the context of environmental water requirements p. 40, 2007). The ecological status of Satluj River is found to be representative of EMC ‘C’ at all the three sites. The average monthly EFs at Rampur, Suni, and Kasol sites vary from 63.06 m³/s (February) to 397.92 m³/s (July), 71.32 m³/s (January) to 431.62 m³/s (July) and 77.78 m³/s (January) to 455.45 m³/s (July) respectively. The EF in terms of percentage of long-term natural mean annual runoff at Rampur, Suni, and Kasol sites range from 42.34, 41.50 and 41.49% respectively at Rampur, Suni, and Kasol sites.