The issue of scale has become paramount for the effective evaluation of watershed development (WSD) programs. This study examines the effectiveness of WSD at meso-scale (1500-10000hectares) in Anantapur and Prakasam districts in Andhra Pradesh. The project enjoys the active support of the AP Department of Rural Development (DRD).
The project has taken the first steps to providing an integrated evaluation model including hydrologic, agronomic, environmental, economic and social equity issues. It is designed to have a number of stand alone input models and to deal with scale from the household to the village and through to the broader watershed scale. The full structure of the model can be obtained from the project team (geoff [dot] syme [at] ecu [dot] edu [dot] au). This model will guide future research and will be iteratively revised as our understanding of the multifaceted, interactive processes evolves and data collection and analysis continues.
Data are currently being gathered of watershed variables in the area, land use, groundwater and surface water resources, population characteristics and so on. A community survey has been prepared to establish WSD outcomes in terms of physical, natural, social, human and financial capitals, and how these change over time in response to climate variability and other drivers. The questionnaire is also designed to assess community resilience and address perceptions of equity and scale.

A] Socio-Economic Progress
Technical and socioeconomic pilots (intensive and extensive field visits) have been conducted in identified or selected districts of Kurnool, Anantapur and Prakasam districts. Two hydrological units were identified for the study. The sample villages were identified in each hydrological unit for carrying out the detailed socioeconomic and livelihood survey. Three program villages and one control village from each unit have been identified i.e., a total of 8 villages spreading over three districts (Table 1).
Villages have been selected at the Upstream; Mid-stream and Down-stream and a matching control village has been selected (Table 2). Qualitative and quantitative tools have been developed- Focus Group Discussions and a survey. Two questionnaires (one at the village level and the other at the household level) have been developed.
The field Instruments were piloted and revised to suit the integrated model and the socioeconomic data. Qualitative information was elicited using the Focus group discussions - four FGDs in each village i.e., a total of 24 FGDs The first round of data collection has been completed in all the sample villages covering 566 households. Data entry is complete.
[B] Hydrology and Land Use
Data on general information, land use, number of water harvesting structures, bore-well water levels and discharge volume, daily rainfall and crop water budgeting for the villages of the selected Hydrological Unit Networks has been procured from the NGO - BIRDS.
NGRI team has just completed the fieldwork at Prakasam and the Anantapur watershed. This included a complete well inventory, water level measurements as well as geophysical logging in the abandoned wells, interviewing people about the scenarios from the
last 15-20 years. The same data has been collected from the second watershed in Gooty. The pre-monsoon (minimum) groundwater levels have been collected and the post-monsoon (maximum) groundwater levels will be collected during the last part of this year. The team is working with DEEPA to clarify apparent data anomalies. Preliminary crop and water use data suitable for the Bayesian Network modelling has been collected.

[C] Integrated Outcomes
An integrated model is being developed that will incorporate crop production and water use and hydrological (surface water and groundwater) models in addition to knowledge gained from extensive household surveys in villages in two case study catchments. The integrated model is expected to link hydrology models with seasonal outputs from crop models. The outputs from the hydrology and crop model feed into socio-economic models together with relevant socio-economic data for the villages. Measures of equity and resilience will be developed to assess differences in outcomes between villages (e.g. upstream, downstream) and within villages (e.g. income groups, gender, land ownership, etc) and changes that over the modelled time period in response to (e.g.) hydrology scenarios. A schematic of the links and scale of the model components is shown below