Monitoring Tools for Urban Lake in Uttar Pradesh

In a climate-risked world, urban lakes play an important role in managing extreme-storm events. These water bodies act as sponges, absorbing high-intensity rainfall. But they have become receptacles for sewage and/or solid waste, or have been built over. Urban lakes also act as significant groundwater recharge points for cities and towns, where dependence on groundwater is increasing due to unplanned urbanization. Restoring these lakes, however, is not the end of the task—they need to be monitored at regular intervals to have a management plan in place. 

 

The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi, is supporting the Department of Urban Development (DoUD), Uttar Pradesh, to develop checklists for monitoring urban lakes. Selected towns in the Gangetic Plains in the state of Uttar Pradesh—the dependence of groundwater is fairly high in these towns—were surveyed to understand the condition of the lakes. 

 

This paper draws out checklists that should be used for monitoring the lakes. It gives guidance on what data to collect, period of collection, and how the sampling should be done with regard to the parameters-hydrology, water quality and biological index—to be checked. The checklists can be used for different cities and towns of the Gangetic Plains.