Abstract Population growth and rapidly developing technologies have affected surface water resources and climate change has created a major stress. Water scarcity is one of the most serious problems in the world. Climate change has observed significant indicators like increasing degraded lands due to soil erosion, desertification, salinization, flooding, water logging, degradation of water qualities and imbalance between availability and demand of fresh water for agricultural, industrial and domestic use, degradation of forest and wild life. Effective watershed management can be helpful in the prevention of these environmental problems and Agricultural Development (AD). It is multi-functional sustainable activity performed to improve the crop productivity, minimize the risk of degradation of natural resource like soil, water. Watersheds are classified major watershed (50,000-2, 00,000 ha), sub-watershed (10,000-50,000 ha), mili-watershed (1000-10,000 ha), micro-watershed (100-1000 ha) and mini-watershed (10-100 ha). Watershed Management Projects (WMPs) are implemented for the development of degraded and drought prone areas and rainfed agriculture based on natural resource management and conservation. These WMPs have been used water harvesting structures including Water Absorption Trenches (WAT), Continuous Contour Trenches (CCT), check dams, gully, earthen plugs, etc. for the conservation of groundwater, soil, forest, etc. The watershed treatments like percolation ponds, farm ponds and field bunds are also suggested. The participatory WMPs are widely suggested for the conservation of natural resources like soil, water, forest, wild life etc. and also for increasing agricultural productivity, generating employment and raising income to the farmers. This study will discuss WMPs modeling (definition, classification of models and proceed) and a review of WMPs assessment models that are widely used in India.
Ravindra D. Gaikwad (Sat,) studied this question.