## 4 Results and Discussion
### Generation of WA+ Based LULC Map (WALU-Water Accounting and Land Use)  
The impact of land use and land cover (LULC) on the water balance, environment, and regional climate and ecosystem services of a basin is significant. Land cover denotes a biophysical state of earth's ground surface, while land use refers to the way or manner in which the land is being used [43]. Thus, the information of accurate and up-to-date land use maps is explicitly required to run the WA+ water accounts. The WA+ framework classifies LULC into broad groups of 80 possible classes. These LULC classes are further arranged into four major water management categories (WMC), namely \"Protected/Conserved Land Use\" (PLU), \"Utilized Land Use\" (ULU), \"Modified Land Use\" (MLU), and \"Managed Water Use\" (MWU) (Table 2). These four WMC classes were developed based on common management characteristics of LULC classes and their degree of influence on natural 'hydroologic cycle'. PLU corresponds to protected areas, viz. reserved forest areas, RAMSAR sites, national parks, wildlife sanctuaries, and coastal protection zones, where anthropogenic interventions are prohibited. The class ULU represents the area with minimal human intervention and low to moderate resource utilization, such as woodlands, natural pastures, savannahs, mountainous shrubs, riparian corridors, wetlands, etc. The water flow is essentially natural.  
The 'MLU' relates to the anthropogenic modification of land use to improved usages, such as the land use that has been changed for livelihood, including urban encroachment, biofuel crops, rainfed cropland, and timber plantations, etc. Water is not detoured, but land use affects all physical processes in the unsaturated zone, including infiltration, storage, percolation, and root hydration, affecting the soil water balance. The 'MWU' corresponds to the elements of the landscape that are accountable to withdrawals using anthropogenic infrastructure, such as dams, weirs, canals, irrigated agriculture, ditches, gates, pipes, pumping stations, etc., to manage the water resources.  
The WMC-based LULC map for the WA+ tool has been prepared (Table 3). A total of 14 LULC types were incorporated in the WALU map of the BRB. PLU shares 3 WMC-based LULC types (protected forest, protected shrubland, and protected natural water bodies) out of the total 14 LULC types, covering 0.2% of the total basin area. The ULU also accounts for 3 WMC-based LULC types (closed deciduous forest, shrubland and mesquite and brooks, rivers and waterfalls) out of the total 14 LULC types, occupying 25.25% of the total area of BRB. The MLU shares a maximum of 5 WMC-based LULC types (forest plantation, rainfed crops-cereals, rainfed crops-vegetables and melons, fallow and idle land, rainfed industry parks, and outdoor) out of the total 14 LULC types, holding 11.1% of the total area of the basin. The MWU shares 3 WMC-based LULC types out of the total 14 LULC types (irrigated crops-cereals, irrigated homeseteads and gardens (urban cities)-outdoor, and irrigated homeseteads and gardens (rural villages)-outdoor) and accounts for the 63.46% of the total area of the basin. Among all the WMC-based LULC types, the irrigated crops-cereals LULC-type accounts for the highest of 62.06% of the total area of the basin, followed by shrubland and mesquite LULC-type with 17.87% and rainfed crops -cereals LULC types with 8.25% of the total area of the basin. [PERSON] et al. [33] have also reported agricultural land as the dominant LULC class of the BRB.  
\begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{l l l l} \hline \hline \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Managed Water Use**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Modified Land Use**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Utilized Land Use**} & \multicolumn{1}{c}{**Conserved Land Use**} \\ \hline \multicolumn{4}{c}{Closed natural forests} \\ \multicolumn{4}{c}{Tropical rain forest} \\ \multicolumn{4}{c}{} \\ \multicol