Abstract:
Many of the major rivers in India originate from the Himalayas. These rivers have significant contribution from
snow and ice which makes these rivers perennial. More than 3 billion people are benefitted by the food and
energy produced in these river basins. This study has been done to Modeling of Snowmelt Runoff in the part of
Sharda (Kali) River basin upto NHPC’s Tanakpur Barrage by integrating MODIS snow cover data and SRTM
digital elevation model (DEM) with Geographic Information System (GIS) and finally into the windows version
of snowmelt runoff model (WinSRM or SRM). The temporal SCA for the period Oct’2006–Sep’2010 was derived
from MODIS Snow Cover data and SRTM DEM was used along with these data to get the snow cover in different
elevation zones. SRM is a temperature index-based snowmelt runoff simulation model, and has been widely used
in almost all the part of the world for simulating snowmelt runoff. The daily hydro-meteorological data (rainfall,
max. & min. temperature and discharge) procured from NHPC Ltd. was used for simulation of snowmelt runoff.
Overall accuracy of SRM for part of the Sharda River basin in terms of coefficient of correlation (R2) is 0.72–0.89
for the period Oct’2006–Sep’2010. Average Snowmelt contribution to the total streamflow computed at Tanakpur
barrage in Sharda River basin is about 16.5%.
