Institutional Concerns in Watershed Management Role of Geographic Information System (GIS)

Abstract

"Watershed management problems have become extremely acute in developing countries where growing populations are exerting intense pressure on increasingly scarce land and water resources. Traditionally, watershed management was viewed as a bio-physical engineering problem, however, more recent thoughts consider watershed management as an integrated process whereby a natural resource is managed in conjunction with human use to produce a series of goods and services. A watershed is a topographically delineated area that is drained by a stream system. Drainage basin and catchment area are synonymous terms to define a watershed. A watershed may contain numerous natural resources such as arable land, forest, grazing land, streams/rivers, occupants/users etc. These resources may be utilized collectively by one group of people but more likely, diverse group of people may all be utilizing different watershed components with varying levels of use activities. As Hewlett (1993) rightly points out that in the context of drainage basin morphology, managerial activities permissible on one part of a basin may not be permissible on another; the efficiency of management in time, money and manpower is directly affected by the spatial pattern of operations. The rules defining when, where and how an individual's allotted resource units can be harvested or how many labor days(in terms of investment) are required also vary considerably across cases."