INVESTIGATION OF POTENTIAL WATER HARVESTING SITES AT POTOHAR USING MODELING APPROACH

Agriculture is the largest employing sector that involves 44.7% of manpower of Pakistan’s total population and participates about 23% in GDP of Pakistan but on the other side, country is facing the shortage of water. The 60% of population lives in rural and hilly areas while implementing the schemes of water in hilly areas is not feasible because of high expenditures and less progress. Moreover, supplying of water in hilly areas is time consuming, unsafe and expensive work therefore, hilly areas rainwater harvesting is the most appropriate and feasible technique. This paper represents the study of runoff pattern and to investigate the potential water harvesting sites in Potohar Plateau of Pakistan. The techniques, such as Geographic Information System, Remote Sensing, HEC-GeoHMS and HEC-HMS were used for delineation of water channels, drainage line and for estimation of runoff generation. The results revealed that 60% of the study area has potential for rainwater harvesting in order to accumulate and store runoff generated from annual rainfall.