Improving assessment of groundwater-resource sustainability with deterministic modelling : a case study of the semi-arid Musi sub-basin, South India /Massuel, Sylvain George, B. A. Venot, J. P. Bharati, L. Acharya, S. Numerical modelling Groundwater management Water supply Hard-rock aquifer India Since the 1990s, Indian farmers, supported by the government, have partially shifted from surface-water to groundwater irrigation in response to the uncertainty in surface-water availability. Water-management authorities only slowly began to consider sustainable use of groundwater resources as a prime concern. Now, a reliable integration of groundwater resources for water-allocation planning is needed to prevent aquifer overexploitation. Within the 11,000-km(2) Musi River sub-basin (South India), human interventions have dramatically impacted the hard-rock aquifers, with a water-table drop of 0.18 m/a over the period 1989-2004. A fully distributed numerical groundwater model was successfully implemented at catchment scale. The model allowed two distinct conceptualizations of groundwater availability to be quantified: one that was linked to easily quantified fluxes, and one that was more expressive of long-term sustainability by taking account of all sources and sinks. Simulations showed that the latter implied 13 % less available groundwater for exploitation than did the former. In turn, this has major implications for the existing water-allocation modelling framework used to guide decision makers and water-resources managers worldwide. 2013 text https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010061227 fdi:010061227 Massuel Sylvain, George B. A., Venot J. P., Bharati L., Acharya S.. Improving assessment of groundwater-resource sustainability with deterministic modelling : a case study of the semi-arid Musi sub-basin, South India. 2013, 21 (7), 1567-1580 EN INDE