Solution Overview
Submitter: ICRISAT
Quantifying landscape resources is fundamental to developing effective Natural Resource Management (NRM) strategies. With rising food demands and population pressures, the available resources are declining. In this regard, integrating land resource inventories with hydrological assessments becomes crucial for optimizing resources. Adopting water-budget-based approaches, rooted in agro-ecological principles, enables a more precise evaluation of both resource availability and demand.
Key Features & Benefits
It involves integrating land resource inventory and hydrology for comprehensive resource quantification and demand assessment. This will help us to understand the demand-supply gap of available resources.
- Characterization of topography, soils, land use, and existing infrastructure at a given landscape
- Characterizing landscape hydrology and assessing the demand-supply gap
- Designing appropriate NRM interventions to bridge the demand-supply gap
- Capacity building and knowledge dissemination
Where It Works and Where It Can Work
This approach is applicable across diverse agro-ecologies, including arid, semi-arid, sub-humid, and humid regions. It is valuable for rainfed systems, groundwater-dependent areas, and fully irrigated canal command areas.
Evidence & Impact
These methods are applied in various landscape clusters across Central India (Uttar Pradesh and Bundelkhand region), Eastern India (Odisha), and Southern India (Telangana) for drought mitigation.
One of the success cases is the Central Indian landscape (Bundelkhand region, Uttar Pradesh), where ICRISAT followed this approach to rejuvenate a degraded landscape of approximately 75,000 hectares between 2018 and 2025.
Scalability & Adoption Support
Numerous public welfare programs across Asia and Africa are actively seeking scalable solutions to achieve land degradation neutrality. In India, the Land Resource Inventory (LRI) and the Hydrology-based approach have gained significant attention for scale-up.
Contact Information & Partners
Contact: Dr. Kaushal K Garg
Email:
Kaushal.garg@icrisat.orgContact: Dr. Sourav Roy
Email:
Sourav.roy@icrisat.org
