Abstract

Urbanization have crossed the limits of natural carrying capacity challenging mankind and its development in terms of progress. The most notable changes in the natural system observed are related to the urban and hydrological system where built up areas in urban region have increased from 100,000km2 in 1994 to 5,000,000km2 in 2005. It is assumed that almost 0.5% of the world surface is occupied by urban areas The aim of the study is to study the behavioural changes in Urban watersheds for recharge and runoff along with increasing Built up areas contributing impervious surfaces over natural ones. Objective is to develop a better understanding of the interactions between surface water flows and water replenishment with changes in land cover characteristics resulting from urbanization at the local, neighbourhood and regional scales. Another objective is to find out relationship between built up and water (surface and sub surface) with empirical, observational and simulation processes for an area with specific climate and physical characteristics. The methodology adopted to study and observe this correlation broadly consist of observation for variations in spatial scale for sub watersheds around 500 or more hectares for urban expansion, changes in land use land cover and hydrological components such as water level in aquifers, wells, runoff and drainages from past to present at temporal scale of about 40years. Conclusion were made on final modelling results with validation and assessment of parameters concluding that runoff is directly proportional to built up and its intensity varies with given roughness land cover, built up and ground water infiltration.

Keywords

urbanization, land cover land use, runoff-recharge