ABSTRACT
The Krishna River Basin (KRB) is one of the longest rivers in central southern India. It is the fourth largest river basin in India in terms of annual discharge (65 km3) and the fifth largest in terms of surface area (258,948 km2). It flows through the states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, covering areas 113,271 km2, 76,252 km2 and 69,425 km2 respectively. The basin is largely semiarid but there is a narrow north-south strip along the Western Ghats that is humid, a dry-sub humid area in the Krishna delta, and it is arid in the rain-shadow east of the Western Ghats. Average annual rainfall in the basin is 800 mm, but ranges from below 300 mm in the northwest to 1000 mm in the delta, to a maximum of over 2000 mm in the Western Ghats. About 90 per cent of the rainfall is received during the monsoon months of May to October. Monsoon failure due to CC affects the cropping pattern of the basin. The total water available at basin level is 34.31 billion cubic metre (BCM), of which surface water is 22.96 BCM, groundwater is 11.34 BCM, and the utilization is 33.84 BCM (surface water: 29.4 BCM and groundwater: 4.43 BCM).
