Introduction: Watershed Development;

The Karnataka Watershed Development Project (KAWAD) is located in the northern districts of Karnataka State, India. This is an area that is characterised by limited water resources for which there is increasing competition. In addition to piloting different institutional approaches to watershed development, KAWAD aims to improve the livelihoods of the inhabitants of three selected watersheds (total area of around 45 000 ha).

Data collection, quality control and analysis:
In India, large amounts of physical, institutional and socioeconomic data have been and continue to be collected in rural areas. Unfortunately, this information is not always easily accessible to potential users and the quality is usually quite variable. A major feature of the KAWAD and APRLP audits was the consolidation of spatial and non-spatial data from a wide range of sources onto geographical information system (GIS) databases.

Some ground-truthing and gap filling was carried out during the collection process with further quality control checks made once the database was established. A major part of the quality control process was the comparison of data and statistics from different sources and analysis and discussions aimed at understanding the reasons for disparities when they occurred. This is arguably the key step in a water audit as it also involves assessing whether the data support accepted wisdom relating to the development and management of water resources.

Main KAWAD and APRLP water audit findings and recommendations:

Project design
The main findings and recommendations of the KAWAD and APRLP water audits.

In the case of KAWAD, the water audit revealed a number of fundamental weaknesses in the project design. Reasons for these invalid assumptions included:
(1) Annual runoff was believed to be 30-40% of annual rainfall whereas secondary data showed it to be in the range 2-5% of annual rainfall at the large watershed scale;

(2) No account was taken of the large numbers of water harvesting structures that existed in the watersheds prior to commencement of the project; and

(3) No account was taken of the combined impacts at different scales of water harvesting and increased groundwater exploitation on patterns of availability and access to water resources.

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