R. Bhavani
Anantapur district is situated in semi arid region of Andhra Pradesh, India. Rainfall is scanty, erratic and unpredictable in this region. In most of the years, there is scarcity of water due to scanty rain fall, and at times, there are flash floods due to sudden excess rainfall. Effects of excess and insufficient rainfalls are floods and droughts respectively. Due to the experience of many droughts in succession, people in this region are not able to imagine the floods and are not able to care the ill effects of floods. With this, people are not hesitating to develop agriculture, Industries and habitations on flanks nearby the rivers. But there are some instances of heavy floods though rare occurrences. Such rare floods may result inundation which may cause damages to property, casualties including livestock etc. To avoid this, it is necessary to have some awareness regarding the extent of inundation due to floods so that, the encroachments on the flanks of rivers can be minimised and in turn the ill effects can be reduced. Here an attempt has been made to assess the Inundation along the flanks of the River Pennar from Penna Ahobilam Balancing Reservoir (PABR) to Mid Pennar Reservoir (MPR) in Anantapur district, Andhra Pradesh state, India. From the mapped inundation, certain patches of cultivable lands which may get submerged at MFL condition along the river Pennar have been identified.