Estimation of Water Yield Under Various Climate Scenarios at a River Basin Scale in the Manimala River, Kerala, India

In the present study, a distributed hydrological model namely soil water analysis tool (SWAT) has been employed for Manimala River Basin in Kerala, India. The entire basin has been divided into 7 major sub-basin to predict the water balance components and their variability under changing climatic conditions. The calibration of the model using the observed data indicated the model parameters such as SOL_AWC, ESCO, GW_REVAP and CN are the sensitive parameters. The estimates of water balance component at basin and sub-basin level show that irrespective of land covers, the runoff generation is as high as 47% (runoff coefficient Q/P) and groundwater recharge is 36%. The estimate of ET is comparatively low.