Water’s ways

HOW many years does it take for a reservoir to fill with sediments? How fast are nutrients supplied to streams and soils? Many a time such questions come in the way of policymaking. The answers lie in the rate at which the hill slopes upstream are eroding. It is important to know the propensity with which river currents cut rocks in the riverbed and carve paths for the water. Called river incision, the phenomenon plays an important role in shaping the structure of mountains, controls carbon cycle and delivers sediment to coast and reefs.

Drought of equity

Science and Technology - Briefs

ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES Making waves

Back to the roots

With barely 200 mm of average annual rainfall, the Thar Desert is one of the most water-stressed areas in India. The recent vagaries of climate has brought to the fore even more disturbing questions of survival. In the Thar, women walk unimaginable distances. Hours of waiting in long queues barely yield a pot of saline water.

Bundelkhand's dalit women join hands to drought-proof their villages

As in the previous years, farmers of the Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh started facing acute water shortage this year, too, with the onset of summer. There were media reports of farmers stealing water to irrigate crops. With scant rains and little help from the government, most people in the region faced a bleak future. But people of three backward districts in the region—Jalaun, Hamirpur and Lalitpur—hope to ease their water woes. They have started work to secure their water resources.

Stench in my backyard

Getting the bulletin right

In the PBS documentary, Monsoon, the poet S P Kurada notes, “The wild monsoon winds blow with abandon, swaying everything in their path.

Capturing the monsoons

Drops for the economy

Reservoirs losing capacity

HEAVY rainfall leading to flash floods in Himalayan rivers in July-end devastated three states—Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. It claimed 34 human lives and damaged property extensively. It also brought into focus the precarious condition of more than a dozen dams in the region.

On elephant’s trail