Riverine ecosystems encompass ecological, social and economic processes (ecosystem functions) that interconnect biotic components and provide goods and services for the society. Degradation of these vital ecosystems has been the primary cause for increasing water insecurity, raising the need for integrated solutions to freshwater management. 

Spatio-temporal patterns of four neighbouring riverscapes in the central Western Ghats, India through land-use analyses using temporal remote sensing data (1973, 2018), reveals a decline in evergreen forests (41%) and fragmentation of intact or contiguous forests (60%). Hydro-ecological footprint illustrates that catchment integrity plays a decisive role in sustaining water for societal and ecological needs. This is evident from the occurrence of perennial streams in the catchment dominated by native flora with forest cover greater than 60%, highlighting the riverscape dynamics with hydrological, ecological, social and environmental dimension linkages and water sustainability. This helps in evolving strategies to adopt integrated watershed management to sustain anthropogenic and environmental water demand 

Citation: Ramachandra T. V., Vinay S., Bharath S., Subash Chandran M. D. and Bharath H. Aithal, 2020. Insights into riverscape dynamics with the hydrological, ecological and social dimensions for water sustenance, Current Science, Vol. 118(9): 1379-1393 

Link to publication: https://www.currentscience.ac.in/Volumes/118/09/1379.pdf