Hydrology modeling to assess soil water balance in Dal Lake basin using SWAT

Estimation of soil water balance for a lake basin becomes significant in planning and executing sustainable management of water resources for any country. This valuation includes computation of different elements involved in hydrologic process and are mandatory to deal with water management problems. There are number of geospatial technology based models are available to understand the hydrology characteristics of any basin. In the current study hydrological model Soil and water assessment tool (SWAT) integrated with QGIS has been chosen to predict the water yield and soil water balance of Dal lake basin, Kashmir valley. SWAT is a physically based integrated watershed model and it is suitable to use worldwide for any complex watershed. Dal lake catchment is not only highly diverse but also covers a huge area of 309 Km2.QSWAT interface for QGIS has been used to carry out the analysis for the time period of 34 years from 1979 to 2013, Data such as slope, Landuse and Landcover (LULC), Soil and weather which includes daily precipitation, temperature, solar radiation, wind speed and Relative humidity has been used and processed on monthly time scale basis. Results of hydrological parameters includes Evapotranspiration, Actual Evapotranspiration (AET), Groundwater Contribution, Potential Evapotranspiration (PET) and Surface runoff are analyzed and represented as both in numbers and as wells as maps.