1. Introduction
Agriculture is a long-standing foundation of Thai society that has resulted in the development of an agricultural society. Income from agriculture is considered to be the main source of income of many households. Most agriculture involves the production of rice. Therefore, farming is an important foundation of society. Presently, rice production involves two to three crops per year; however, in some areas, cultivation is limited by highly seasonal climates, which make it possible to cultivate only one crop each year [
1]. However, each cultivation incurs costs from many factors such as plot preparation, fertilization and harvesting that are controlled by the farmers. Nonetheless, water resources are the main factor important for cultivation. Water resource management is difficult to control due to some areas using irrigation while other areas rely on direct rainfall, which makes it possible to cultivate only once a year. Different years have different amounts of rainfall, and the problem of drought is one of the issues that affects farmers who rely on rainfall for cultivation [
2,
3].
Drought is a disaster that is caused by long-term water deficits in an area and affects some activities of people [
4,
5] including agricultural activities, which are the main generator of income for people in the research area. As a result, agricultural yields and farmers’ incomes are lowered. This is an important problem that must be solved. One of the strategies for solving this problem is the implementation of water resource management guidelines [
6,
7,
8,
9].
A water budget is the reserved water in a hydrological system or cycle, and it is the tool that makes possible the evaluation of the water flowing in and out of the area studied [
10,
11]. Hence, water resource management must consider the water budget. The general principles of a water budget include increasing water quantity and potential. The strategies for increasing water quantity include sourcing water from other areas and developing new water storage sources. In managing water resources, efforts must be made to maximize efficiency by utilizing available resources to their fullest potential while also ensuring that water availability is aligned with water usage demands [
12,
13,
14]. The guidelines for improving the potential of water budgets in basins provide a strategy for increasing water availability and storage as well as maximizing the benefits of existing water resources. Guidelines support the improvement of the management of water sources and the implementation of single and network systems to manage multiple sources of water [
15,
16,
17]. Oftentimes, the official guidelines are not acceptable to farmers and are impractical. The water resources problem still remains in many areas, especially in areas where the government has focused more on items such as investment cost, labor cost and incorporating related organizations.
Currently, water resource management must consider many factors including economy, sustainability and fairness in order to maximize benefits. This is because water resources are limited spatially and temporally. Water resource management includes supply management and demand management [
18,
19,
20]. Water budgets must be sufficient to meet demands. Water budgets must consider natural losses from evaporation and leakage. Since the amount of water lost is high, the amount of remaining water must be calculated by conducting a water balance analysis in order to identify the amount of the water that can be used as required and to obtain guidelines for managing the remaining water resources [
21,
22]. To analyze the water balance of each area, it is necessary to fully consider metrological and hydrological data, physical maps, water reservoirs, land use conditions, contours, directions of water flows, hydraulic structures, water demands and other data. This not only supports the assessment of the available water within an area, but also enhances guidelines created for increasing the storage capacities of existing reservoirs. The accepted guidelines easily lead to practicality and a sustainable solution for the water resources problem [
23].
Stakeholders in the water resource management process can be classified into three groups: farmers, community leaders, and government organizations [
24,
25,
26,
27]. The process provides an opportunity for stakeholders to have a role in both the planning and implementation stages of the project, from the initial information gathering stage to providing feedback and suggestions to improve the project’s operation and minimize negative impacts, as well as to enhance its benefits to stakeholders and gain acceptance from the community. This participation process ensures the project’s sustainability [
28,
29,
30,
31]. Solving water resources problems using community participation leads to acceptance of the guidelines for management and real practical utility, providing community benefit.
This research studied water resource management in the Chum Saeng Sub-District, Satuek District, Buri Ram Province by exploring and creating physical maps of the three water reservoirs (Nhong Chonlaprathan, Nhong Taban and Nhong Jabok-Takian), the natural canals, the irrigation buildings, the directions of water flows, the land use conditions and the water demands. This enabled the evaluation of the available water from the monthly rainfall data for three cases, which are (1) the highest rainfall, (2) lowest rainfall and (3) average rainfall during 2009–2021. In this study, we analyzed the water balances in order to increase reservation storage capacities and create acceptable guidelines for the management of water resources within the study areas.
4. Conclusions
Chum Saeng Sub-District, Satuek District, Buriram Province, Thailand has been facing a serious drought situation. There are many guidelines for solving this problem being promoted locally by both government and nongovernment entities. In addition, the official guidelines are not accepted and difficult for farmers to use in practice. Therefore, this research aimed to create acceptable guidelines for water resource management in order to solve the problem of droughts in this area. Three storage reservoirs were considered (Nhong Chonlaprathan, Nhong Taban and Nhong Jabok-Takian). Water balances were analyzed in order to study the available water of the reservation volumes of each reservoir in four cases of differing rainfall (highest rainfall, average rainfall, lowest rainfall and rainfall in 2021) using monthly rainfall from 2018 to 2021 at Station 020191 in Satuek District. Community participation was utilized to consider and confirm the results as well as approve the guidelines for management of water resources in the study area.
For the three reservoirs, it was found that the reservation volumes in the cases of the highest rainfall, average rainfall and the rainfall in 2021 tended to increase and exceed the highest reservation volume. Additionally, the reservation volumes in the case of the lowest rainfall tended to decrease and be lower than the lowest reservation volume. By considering water consumption and water demand in the study areas, it was found that the reservation volumes of the three water reservoirs would exceed the highest reservation volumes in the case of the highest rainfall after using the reserved water. Nevertheless, there were some water scarcities at times in the average rainfall and lowest rainfall situations. Hence, there are three appropriate guidelines that consider water consumption and demand in order to provide benefits for agricultural activities, which is the main activity in the areas studied: increasing the reservation volumes, expanding the catchment areas and expanding the agricultural areas. These three guidelines will provide sustainable development guidelines because they are truly accepted by the stakeholders.