Structural classification and monitoring development status of impounded water resources using spatial information technology of Purba Medinipur district, India

Freshwater resources are essential for aquatic life. A reliable estimation of the area under this resource is still elusive. Estimation of water resource availability is an essential requirement for devising efficient water resource management strategies. Purba Medinipur district has a vast amount of impounded water bodies (IWB); therefore, the study focuses on its area wise classification, concentration, overall distribution pattern and density measurement. High-resolution satellite imageries over the three periodic years (2010, 2014, and 2018) have been used to extract the water bodies’ area. The IWBs are classified into small (< 0.5 ha), medium (0.5–1 ha), and large scale (> 1 ha) according to their size. The growth rate pattern, density measurement, and entropy model have been applied to estimate the characterization of temporal and spatial distribution. The kernel density model is estimated and compact density has been observed mostly in four blocks, i.e., Moyna, Bhagwanpur-II, Contai-II, and Ramnagar-II, of the district. Absolute Shannon’s entropy of Moyna block was 0.7459 in 2010 decreasing gradually 0.7442 and 0.7323 (2014–2018), indicating highly concentrate distributions. The highly compact growth pattern has been observed in Ramnagar-II block. Overall statistical analysis of structural classification and monitoring development status reveals that the impounded water body of this region has been increasing rapidly. The characteristics of concentrated water bodies show most of the water bodies situated around the basins area or in the topographic depressions. This study can give about suitable spatio-temporal information for analyzing operational issues related to water resources and its availability.