Worth a thousand words

Water resources of Andhra Pradesh is a coffee table atlas containing maps and graphs that can give one a quick heads up on the state’s foodgrain production, rainfall variation and deviation, floods and droughts along with other issues related to climate, physiography and land use. The effort spans several years, successfully covering the length and breadth of the state, with contributions from a multi-disciplinary team and large number of sources.

The attempt has been to analyse and present data in public domain of several government organisations, mostly from the irrigation department, to act as a decision support system.

The shape of the book is unusually square, inspired by the spread of the state. It is well-designed with the use of distinguished colours, easy on the eye.

The atlas is interspersed with well written narratives and referenced tables and graphs. The introduction says that the idea is to facilitate “for informed decision making at policy or planner level and to act as a source of knowledge for academicians and researchers”.

I recently wrote an article on the Krishna river water-sharing accord, and in hindsight the atlas would have been of immense help while researching the story.

The publication, with depth of information, unfortunately has very little to offer on water quality; the stress is on quantity available and allocation of water.

It would have been useful to incorporate the quality of the state’s rivers and water bodies to get an indication of the increasing point sources of pollution from growing urban conurbations and industrial zones.

All the information can be found online, and the authors’ quest is to make it freely available to planners, academicians, students or anyone interested in water resources of the state.

The authors say that more analysis and data will be added as and when possible. I am sure the additions will match up to the rigour of the original effort.

I would recommend a series of coffee table atlas on water resources, one for each state along the lines of Water resources of Andhra Pradesh.

For more informations, log on to http://water-atlas.blogspot.in

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