Watershed Management for Sustainable Development ISBN - 978-93-83083-82-4 Editors: R.N. Tiwari and G.P. Pandey Publisher: Excellent Publishers, New Delhi  1  Identification of Water Conservation Sites in Kolar Watershed of Nagpur District, Maharashtra using Geographical Information System (GIS) Technique P. Kundal 1 , S.V. Muley 2 , and Y.B. Katpatal 3 1 Post Graduate Department of Geology, RTM Nagpur University, Law College Square, Amravti road Nagpur-440001 (Maharashtra) 2 Rural Water Supply Division, Zilla Parishad (GSDA) Nagpur, Maharashtra. 3 Department of Civil Engineering, Visvesaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur- 440010 (Maharashtra) 1 pradeepkundal@gmail.com Abstract: Groundwater management remains a challenging area and hence development and recharge is still to be seen in the holistic phase. Thanks to the advent of the tools like remote sensing and GIS which has provided scientists with the capacity to take into account every bit of information required to arrive at the holistic planning of this important resource. In the present study, various influencing parameters which affect the groundwater development have been generated using satellite data and analysed on GIS platform through overlay technique through Analytical hierarchy Process (AHP). Results show that a watershed unit can be shown with appropriate methods of recharge which will optimise the process of groundwater recharge more scientifically. Keywords: GIS, Remote sensing, Groundwater recharge, Weights overlay analysis. 1. INTRODUCTION The recent drought in Maharashtra is being described as the state's worst in many decades, causing agricultural distress and forcing villagers to move to urban areas looking for work. Large parts of Maharashtra lie in the rain-shadow of the Western Ghats. It is therefore a drought-prone area geographically. But drought vulnerability can be reduced or increased by proper management of water resources. The year’s (2013) drought has been described as worse than the 1972 drought yet, if one looks at rainfall pattern of 1972 and that of 2012 it is seen that rainfall was low in 1972 as compared to monsoon of 2012 in most of the districts. The groundwater resources in the state are assessed on watershed as a unit. Thus there are 1505 watersheds (GSDA, 2010), the latest groundwater assessment report of the year 2008-09 categorized 73 watersheds as overexploited according to the stage of development. Three watersheds are categorized as critical and 119 are categorized as semi-critical and remaining are categorized as safe (GSDA, 2010). Groundwater occurs in spatial domain and nature of aquifer system particularly in hard rock terrain is anisotropic, this typical position posses problems in exploration and management of groundwater in shallow as wells as deep aquifer. Appropriate strategies are not possible without consideration of spatial distribution of aquifer system and study of aquifer parameters in spatial domain. Remote sensing and Geographical information system (GIS) are playing a vital role in the field of hydrology and water resources development. Remote sensing provides multi-spectral, multi- temporal and multi-sensor data of the earth’s surface (Choudhury et al., 2003). One of the greatest advantages of using remote sensing data for hydrological investigations and monitoring is its ability to generate information in spatial and temporal domain, which is very crucial for successful analysis, prediction and validation (Sarma and Saraf, 2002). It has an important role in refining the spatial patterns of rainfall and assessment of water use by crops and natural vegetation, and their monitoring (Meijerink, 2007). GIS is one of the most important tools for integrating and analyzing spatial and non- spatial information from different sources or disciplines. In view of this an attempt is made to identify water conservation sites in Kolar watershed. 2. STUDY AREA The study area falls in Kolar watershed, which is a part of Godavari river basin and catchment of Wainganga river in the Nagpur district of Maharashtra (Figure 1). It has a total areal extent of 1039.65 km 2 , out of which, the area under Maharashtra State is 1025.87 km 2 and the area under Madhya Pradesh is 13.78 km 2 . It is distributed in Six Taluka’s of Nagpur District. The major area of watershed falls in Kalmeshwar Taluka with an area of 453.15 km 2 (44.17%), while the area in Saoner Taluka is 243.79 km 2 (23.76%), Katol Taluka 131.77 km 2 (13.84%), Nagpur Taluka 85.54 km 2 (8.34%), Narkhed Taluka 58.12 km 2 (5.67%) and Kamthi Taluka 53.48 km 2 (5.21%). The Kolar watershed lies between latitude 21° 10’ 0” N - 21° 30’ 00” N and longitude 78° 40’ 00” E - 79° 00’ 00” E falling in Survey of India toposheets No 55 K/11, 55 K/12, 55 K/15, 55, K/16, 55 O/3 and 55 O/4. 2014,pp.1-6