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Tl Irrigation Engineering
Indus Basin Irrigation System
1.History:
The Indus Valley has been the host to one of the most ancient civilization of hu
man history, the Indus Valley Civilization. After the extinction of the Indus Ci
vilization, new settlements especially in doabs grew slowly. New irrigation syst
ems started to evolve. Inundation canals and small dams were constructed and pop
ulation grew all around this area. In order to reduce the occurrence of low irri
gation water supply the British authorities, towards the middle of the last cent
ury, started modernizing and expanding the irrigation system of the Indus Basin.
The Almighty Allah has gifted Pakistan with abundant water resources with water
flowing down the Himalayas and Karrakurram heights from the world's largest gla
ciers , a free and unique bounty of nature for this land of alluvial plains. As
a result of this natural resource, today we have the worlds marvelous and the la
rgest contiguous irrigation system that currently irrigates over 16 million hect
ares of land, out of 34 million hectares of cultivable lands available. This lan
d lies within the plains formed by river Indus and its tributaries. Britishers s
tarted the barrage irrigation system during 1930s. However, before that the resi
dents of Punjab, Sindh, and Frontier had constructed a number of inundation cana
ls to irrigate their lands. In the Punjab, 38 such canals had been taken out of
Sutlej, Indus, and Chenab rivers to irrigate areas around Bari Doab Multan, Muza
ffargarh, and Dera Ghazi Khan. In Sindh, water level of the Indus during summer
had always been higher than the surrounding lands, thus, 16 inundation canals in
this area had conveniently carried out the irrigation water during past century
. However, British Army Engineers undertook construction and improvement of seve
ral irrigation canals in the sub- continent. Subsequently, remodeling/constructi
on work on Bari Doab Canal; Sidhnai Canal, Lower Sohag, Ramnagar Canal, Lower Jh
elum Canal, Kabul Canal, and Lower Sawat were completed by the end of l9th centu
ry. However, at the time of independence country had 29 canals to provide regula
ted supply to an area of about 11 million hectares, beside an area of about 3.2
million hectares irrigated through inundation canals leading from Indus and its
tributaries. These main inundation canals included Upper Sutlej, Lower Sutlej, S
hahpur, and Chenab in Punjab; whereas, Rohri, Fuleli, Pinyari, and Kalri in Sind
h. However, after the construction of barrages these canals are no more inundati
on canals but get regulated water supply and some of them have become perennial
while few are nonperennial.
2.Water Ability of the IBIS
There are three main sources of water availability in the Indus Basin: 2.A .Surf
ace Water. The average annual flow of Western Rivers of Indus Basin is approxima
tely 142 million acre feet (MAF). About 105 MAF of this water is diverted for ir
rigation purposes and about 32 million acre feet outflows to the Arabian Sea.
M.Safdar, 2007-civil-48 Page 1