Ground water vulnerability assessment of the South East India in the context of climate change stressors
Résumé
Climate change is affecting the agricultural sector since it is dependent on climatic conditions and water resource availability. The impacts tend to be greater in semi-arid and hard rock areas with few water resources. Vast area of the Tamil Nadu comes under Semi-arid and hard rock area. Due to prevailing semi-arid climate in these areas, both surface and ground water resources are very much limited due to several years of low and inconsistent rainfall. The agricultural activity in these areas have particularly became vulnerable to present day climate variability. In order to address these problems, the vulnerability profile is constructed by combining indices of “adaptive capacity” with “sensitivity indices”. The adaptive capacity was measured by biophysical indicators, socioeconomic parameters and technological factors. To measure sensitivity to future climate change IPCC-AR4 GCM climate model output obtained under IPCC SRES-A2 GHG emission scenario projected for the period 2040-2060 were used by downscaling for south India. Finally, the vulnerability of living population to future climate change was assessed for the entire semi - arid and hard rock area of Tamil Nadu state. The results show that six district are highly vulnerable to future climate change.