Special Focus on Power System Protection With Special Reference To Hydro Power Plants : Snowmelt Runoff Modeling in an Indian Himalayan River Basin using WinSRM, RS & GIS

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%.