Quantification of morphometric characterization for watershed management planning in a western Himalayan Basin, India

Abstract

Watershed development and management plans are very important for harnessing surface water and groundwater resources. To prepare a comprehensive watershed development plan, it becomes necessary to understand the topography, erosional status and drainage pattern of the area. Spatial technologies viz. remote sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS) have proved to be the efficient tools in delineation of drainage pattern and water resources management and its planning. Morphometric analysis helps to quantify and understand the hydrological characteristics of a river basin and the results are essential inputs for a comprehensive water resource management plans. It has wide applications such as watershed management, cumulative effects assessment and analysis, watershed prioritization, hydraulic and sediment relations, engineering design concepts and geomorphologic instantaneous unit hydrograph developments etc. This study was undertaken to quantify the morphometric characteristics of Tawi river basin up to Jammu (area 2165 km2). GIS and image processing techniques have been adopted for the identification of morphological features and analyzing the linear, areal and relief aspects of the Tawi river basin of western Himalaya in Jammu and Kashmir State, India. The digital data format from the ministry of economy, trade, and industry (METI) of Japan and the United States national aeronautics and space administration (NASA) jointly with 30 m spatial resolution, ASTER GDEM (Advanced Space borne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer Global Digital Elevation Model) has been used for deriving the river basin morphometric parameters using ArcGIS 9.3. The Strahler's method of stream ordering has been adopted for ordering the streams. The most of the area under the basin is highly undulating and mountainous in nature. Tawi basin is a 6th order drainage basin and drainage pattern mainly is sub-dendritic to dendritic type. The drainage density of the basin is pretty high as 1.04 km/km2 which indicates the basin is well drained, and having high permeable subsoil. The circularity ratio value 0.4 reveals that the basin is strongly elongated and highly permeable homogenous geologic materials. The results of this study with prioritization of watersheds of the basin would help to different stakeholders such as agriculturists and natural resources managers for better decisions making to utilize and manage the water resources in more sustainable manner.