 Hello everyone. Welcome to NPTEL course on Rural Water Resources Management. This is week 10 lecture 5. We have come to the end of week 10 and we have been looking at natural methods or nature-based solutions for improving the land use land cover, basically adding more green natural green to the system, which directly influences the water balance by slowing down the water and causing more recharge. It directly influences the water storage capacity in the soil and thereby improving the water in the rural setting. In the last class, we looked at forest cover increase using deforestation and up forestation. A forest station is planting trees on a land which has not been forested or converting a barren land into forest, whereas deforestation is converting a forest land which has been degraded into a forest, which means you're taking a forest, initially forested land, but now it's no more of good forest, so you convert it back, you bring it back to life as a forest. Now, when you bring that forest back, what happens to the water budget? We claim to say that the forest water resources would increase. We claim that the water is more stored in the soil and we claim that the soil quality is good, quality in terms of the nutrients in the soil. Also, the soil thickness increases because there's a lot of biomass regeneration going on. So, let's see from a particular study how this happens. That'll be the first aspect in week 10, lecture 5. We'll be looking at a natural forest and show how trees can improve the water quality and the soil quality. But also this study by Shu et al 2019 shows that not all trees are good. You can plant eucalyptus as I said, but eucalyptus by itself is not a native for most regions. So, let's see. When you have an original eucalyptus plantation, this is the study they're starting. They're starting with a forest which has eucalyptus plantation and they want to improve the water content in the soil, the soil quality, which is nutrients, and also see how it's going to be beneficial for the rural environment. Just bringing a forest would definitely improve the water, but if you don't pick a good forest, it will actually backfire, which means it will cause more damage than initially it was. Let's look at an example. There's three experiments. The first experiment, you take an original eucalyptus plantation and just let it rain and then you look at the runoff. When a rainfall happens, there is some runoff which is collected, which is the water from the watershed is collected in the stream or river. You could see that the annual water flow is high, which is the gray color of all the plows, which means loss of water is high, loss of sediments is high, along with sediments, nitrogen and phosphorus is also lost. So, once all these are lost, then you don't have much forest to develop. What would be the case without the trees? This will be much, much higher because there's no trees, all the water will come down. The water will take the sediments out, so it will be soil erosion, so it will be very, very high. All these will be very high in terms of no forest. Just an example I'm saying. However, between the forest, you can have different trees that behave differently and conserve differently. The first is you have an original forest which has been converted into eucalyptus trees. Why eucalyptus? I'm telling about eucalyptus a lot, so someone should ask me why. Why? Because eucalyptus grows easily, less maintenance and grows very fast. Within five years, you will almost see a mature tree. It sells very good, the tree, the wood sells good price and it's also medicinal value. Eucalyptus, they leave, they use it for all these medicines, old medicines. So, when you don't have any management on the forest, then a lot of runoff is coming off, water is lost. However, when you put native species inside, enriched native tree, which means in between, in between and in some locations, you are putting wherever spaces, you are putting the native trees and letting them grow. So, the light green are the native trees. The eucalyptus is very, very long. It just grows tall and it would prevent other trees from growing because it's tall, it can shade the sunlight and so the other trees, small trees cannot grow quickly. So, still when you enrich the native tree, which is for example, mean, then you could see that the soil loss, the water loss, the soil loss, the nutrient, which is nitrogen phosphorus loss is coming down. The orange is coming down compared to the gray one. So, it's good. Oh, very good. Your losses are coming down and between the years also the losses are coming down, which could be an impact of growing a forest. As I said, just growing a forest, you could see all of this coming down. From here to here, all of this is coming down and also depends on the natural condition for that year. The last experiment is where you create space. You create space for the native trees to grow, which is called thinning. What is thinning is you're removing some trees out of the forest. You're removing the eucalyptus trees. So, thinning and enriched native tree. So, you're thinning the trees, you're cutting down the number of eucalyptus and replacing them the same spot with the native trees. If you do that, then most of the water is stored. You see the green color, that is the TEP, where you have thinning and enriched native plantations. You could see that all the plots that the least loss of water, sediment, which is soil and nutrients of nitrogen phosphorus occurs in this plot, where you have cut down some of the eucalyptus trees and replace them with the native trees. The important factor here is why you can just remove all the eucalyptus trees and put your native trees. You still have the eucalyptus because of the economic value. So, this is what I'm saying is a balance. If you convert everything to forest and where will the food grow is the question. So, you need to balance with nature. It's not good to completely kill all the trees and convert it to rice. And also, it is very hard for people to change from rice to something else if you don't grow rice in an agricultural forest. I say agricultural forest land, which means a forest land is converted to a agricultural feed. So, basically, you are getting into trouble here. Because on one hand, you want to conserve nature. On the other hand, you have to feed rice. So, this is a given day and that is what this last experiment is explaining. I'm not asking you to cut down all your economic costs, all your profits. Do some profit, but also do a lot of native species also so that your profit continues. In these two steps, your profit will not continue, maybe in the second one. But in the first one, sooner or later, all the sediment is lost. All the nutrients will be lost. Your trees will die. So, it's better to keep these native trees and sustain the water, sustain the nutrients and the sediments. Forest for water conservation. Let's see how forests help in water conservation. What are the different types of increasing the forest cover? We said forestation, conversion of barren lands to forest. We said reforestation, conversion of a degraded forest into a forest and agroforestry. This is a new term we are going to see, wherein agroforestry is the process of having forest and agricultural activity coexisting in the same location. And all these three have been promoted widely by the government. For example, in the Ganges mission to clean the Ganges and improve the quality of the Ganges water and the lands surrounding it. There's been tremendous support by the government by helping to increase the forest cover. They've already planted 2,760 hectares of land in 2016-70. And another 8,000 hectares of land during 2017-18. So all this needs a lot of budget, which has been given by the government through the Name Ganga program. What is more needed is people to voluntarily come and practice these different methods, because it has been widely documented that forests can improve the soil quality, the water quality and bring back more benefits to the society. Let's look at the agroforestry detail, because we've already looked at agroforestation and reforestation. Let's look at agroforestry. So what is agroforestry? Let us define it quickly. It is defined as agriculture with trees, which is very simplified explanation by FAO and World Agroforestry. What happens is you have agriculture and trees, the forest trees, which are growing and that is where the forestry comes and then agro comes. Agro comes in front, which means most or most of the land. So if someone can ask, is it percentage 50% agriculture, 50% forest, it depends. There's no set rule, but at least you should have 30% of forest. Still, most of the land is agriculture or food products are grown, because to sustain the human population, they do a lot of agriculture. Let's look at some of these examples where agriculture is existing with trees. Here in Peru, you have these modern slopes. If you just have coffee plantation, then when a solid storm comes in or soil erosion happens, all of these soils are washed away. This is what happened in Kerala recently, a lot of landslides, because there's no big forest cover which is holding down the soil. So what in Peru they have done? They've planted trees and forest along the bunts. You can see the forest trees along the area. It's not fully clear and then they put coffee. So coffee grows in between the forest. In fact, there's something called shade grown coffee. What is shade grown coffee? The shade is given by the trees. It has better taste as per coffee connoisseurs. It is very expensive and it is health cautious and nature cautious, because you are not cutting down the trees. You are not displacing the trees to grow coffee. Coffee takes a lot of land. You are growing coffee with the trees, which is important, especially in the rainforest regions, tropical regions of Vietnam, Amazon, etc. India, India, and Scourg. If you go there, you could see that most of the land is coffee plantation, no forest, but that is what we are trying to promote in agroforestry. In Honduras and the Nagaland, you could see that in between the forest, they're growing some food crops, some spinach, and other things that can be sold for a livelihood and also subsistence farming, which is just for their livelihood, the farmers, the local villagers, they grow it and then they eat it. So it's not much for sale. Still, they're healthy. They get the food requirements and nutrients. They can also grow some grass and some other fodder plants for the cattle and chicken. So agroforestry system includes both traditional and modern land use systems where trees, the forest trees grow along with crops and our animal production systems and agricultural setting. So what is the animal production? That is where the fish, the grazing, everything happens. So if you have these forests and along with that, a small pond where your fish is growing, your chickens are kept or your goat sheep and cattle are grazing, all these is including in the agroforestry because either you're using the land for agriculture or animal production is the same under the agriculture ban. As long as you don't cut down the trees, they're okay. So it has to coexist. It aims to preserve forests while doing agriculture. So the catch is the forest giving the nutrients to the agriculture or agriculture is also helping to the forest and in a degraded forest land, a lot of studies have found that these sustainable agricultural patterns of having some grazing, some controlled grazing and letting animals go into the forest for food and agroforestry activities has increased the forest problem because you're maintaining the land, you're maintaining the water in the crop. So for that, the trees also take water, the trees also take nutrients and grow well. More information can be sought from the FAO's book Agroforestry and Tenure, which is also by the World Agroforestry. Very, very big institutions that work on agroforestry because you cannot just keep on cutting down the forest for agriculture. Yes, we need to eat, but we cannot just wipe out the forest. So there should be a balance and that balances agroforestry. Most importantly with agroforestry, there has been a lot of ownership and maintenance because now people take ownership of the forest. Initially, the forest was no one's land. Anyone can go in, anyone can do whatever they want. But now you can actually put in ownership. So someone's cutting down a tree, the people will run and say, how can you cut the tree? You cannot cut the tree. And the people are always there. You don't need a forest officer to maintain the forest or the animals, etc. Because the people are always there taking care of the agricultural lands, it is very hard to do any illegal activities. Operatives, communities and NGOs play a vital role in converting land to forest through agroforestry, the forestation and reforestation. In a forestation, they would take these saplings and go and plant it and then increase the forest cover. In reforestation, they will have to do some management of the land, convert it back into a forested land through vegetation. And we just saw agroforestry where there is already forest. You can in between grow crops. What is needed? What is needed at the local rural villages? Quality nursery where we have healthy native species of plants and trees is a sapling. And water conservation networks are put in these nurseries to provide water at a very sustainable fashion like drip irrigation. And it is managed and maintained by NGOs, scientists, etc. Then they give these to these villages. And mostly women are doing very well in these kind of activities, agroforestry, because they cannot manage the whole land. Maybe they don't have time or they're getting, so here you can see that it is very old. They don't just manage the entire land, but she can manage the water for her crops. And since the trees are already there, the trees would take up the water, excess water from the crops. You can see how the tribal woman is handling the drip irrigation system in a horticulture area. Horticulture is where you have a lot of fruit trees and stuff. So when you have fruit trees, it doesn't count as a forest. So make sure that still a forestry is needed, a wild native forestry is needed. So you could see that amla plots under horticulture has been higher in these agroforestry regions, 40% more at these progressive farmers, where they control the water, they control the fertilizers, and more importantly, it has grown along with the forest. I would like to recap of week 10, until the last slide we have been looking at mechanisms, the green nature-based mechanisms to improve the water conditions in the village by improving the forest cover. And we've shown that the forest cover can reduce the surface runoff, reduce the sediment loss and nutrient loss, nitrogen and phosphorus. We discussed on natural water harvesting structures compared to week nine, where we looked at engineered water structures. We are here looking at nature-based structures. As the name comes, it is either used from nature products, merged with engineering products, or it is totally inspired from nature. And the figure you see at the bottom is from the beavers, which are making their own small check dam, wood soil plugs and some saplings. And what is the learning from these exercises is water can be easily stored in small check dams size of a beaver dam, and the forest can evolve. These slowly closing of water can actually aid in creating different pathways for water and then improving the forest cover. Less constructed, cleared and managed. So what is a nature-based solution? It is less, it's not zero construction. It is less constructed, less clearances and managed. Don't ask me, what is clearance? Is it a percentage? Ten percent of the land cannot be cleared, those kind of things. People always get around with those numbers. So it's better to leave it as a qualitative statement less. It has to be less. You cannot have a lot of construction. As soon as you understand that nature-based solutions are the best to conserve nature, you will definitely look at trying to reduce as much the construction as possible. In IED campus, IEDs are known for its very beautiful natural settings, forested kind of an environment, a lot of trees, plants, animals, birds. And in between them, they would have built the buildings, not clearing all the forest. So this is where you could understand that you could still manage between both, less constructed and less clear and managed. The first example we saw that dam may not be fully leak proof. It is also okay to have a leaky dam which can improve the water supply in the downstream regions. We looked at wooden check dams and leaky dams, etc. We looked at rainwater harvesting structures, like the recharge pits and small farm ponds. And we looked at most importantly, rain gardens. In the farm ponds, you just dug some land and then let the water channel and come in without much construction. But in the rain gardens, you had local native species of trees and plants, like big shoots which would slow down the water and let the water infiltrate rather than convert it into a river and stream networks runoff. So you reduce the runoff, put more water into the ground through agriculture and it's not nature-based purely systems. It does have some construction. Rain gardens have been widely used across the world. I've shown you some case studies. And rain gardens can be of wetland type where you have some construction at the surrounding and let the plant take up the polluted water and convert it into good water. The land management scenario, we looked at afforestation, reforestation and agroforestry. In the afforestation, we looked at conversion of barren lands. We looked at the Miyawaki foresting technique, which is applicable to afforestation and reforestation. We looked at the afforestation where females have been starting to look at these forests because it's easier for them to maintain a forest than agricultural land. And as the Miyawaki pattern explains, after three to four years, you don't disturb the tree. Just let the tree grow and it will grow into full livelihoods options. Community participation is the key of all the examples I showed, unlike the all water harvesting systems and in-house water purification networks. It is more important to have a community participation because everyone can take part. Everyone can understand the importance of forest and the green cover because everyone understands the importance of water. We looked at some community participation activities where they have converted tea forested slope into a forested area through the NM Sub-Guru Foundation. They got the saplings at a lower price or even free and then they were given the tutorial of how to manage the plants. Then after two or three years of maintenance and managing the plants, the trees have grown and become a full forest. Now within the forest, you can go back to agroforestry uses like amla, mango, etc., which fetch a good price in the market. So it is not like you're going to suffer a big loss by converting your land to forest. You'll also achieve some economic stability if you manage it properly. And this has to be told to the farmers. There's a myth that if you have forest, all the land will be taken up. No, if it is a forest, they'll ask you to find the exact locations of native species, native animals in a forest where they can be protected. There's something called conservation forest from the British period. Mostly conservation forests have been prohibited for public to use and those are the lands where you can go and get the native species of plants and trees. You can find the native animals in the network and also use the understanding, training from these forests to apply in your reforestation and afforestation activities. The last part is more important, agroforestry, where forest and agriculture can coexist. I've shown you a lot of studies in the previous slides where forest land has been converted into to support agriculture slightly, but also remain with the forest. That has had the best implications for sustaining the forest, sustaining water and creating an ownership in the process because it enhances ownership to bring more people into water conservation. At the end of the day, they need a profit. They need food on the plate. If you keep on pushing, they'll conserve water. They still need food on the plate. So you could say with these examples, the agroforestry examples, that you can conserve nature, you can conserve water and soil and still get a good income for your livelihoods. With this, I would like to stop week 10 lecture. We have come across major sections in this rural water resource management course. In the remaining courses, I'll be showing some case studies, some data that you could use for rural water resource management. And more importantly, we'll just quickly look at what has been taught and the key understandings that come out should be. What resources are there? It's up to the rural communities on how they use the water resources for sustainable development. I'll see you in the next class. Thank you.