Scientific Evaluation of Integrated Watershed Development Programme Projects in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh, India

The current study was taken up to investigate the utility of the Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) tools for evaluation of 13 Integrated Watershed Development Programme watershed projects implemented during 2009-2016 in Kurnool District of Andhra Pradesh. The study was carried out using high resolution Resourcesat-2, Linear Imaging self-Scanning System (LISS)-IV data of 2011 (pre-treatment) and 2016 (post-treatment) to assess the changes in land use/land cover and biomass over a period of five years (2011-16). Due to implementation of the watershed developmental activities, an additional area of 15100 ha has been brought under cultivation. The vegetation maps indicated that 20531 ha of fallow land converted to dense (9533 ha) and open vegetation (10249) categories during the project period due to the adoption of soil and water conservation practices. An additional area of 280 ha (5.72%) increased under water bodies and 1352 ha waste land converted to cultivable land due to construction of farm ponds, percolation tanks and check dams. This area is attributed to cropland and plantations in the year 2016.