Morphometric analysis and sub-watersheds prioritization of Nagmati River watershed, Kutch District, Gujarat using GIS based approach

Abstract

Morphometric analysis of any watershed and its prioritization is one of the important aspects of planning for implementation of management programmes. Present study evaluates the quantitative morphometric characteristics of Nagmati River watershed in Kutch District of Gujarat by utilizing Cartosat-1 data (CartoDEM). In all 19 aerial and 6 linear morphometric parameters of the watershed have been evaluated. Drainage map of the study area reveals a dendritic drainage pattern with sixth order stream network comprising 492 numbers of streams and confining an area of 129.41 km2. Mean bifurcation ratio (Rb) and stream length ratio (RL) of the watershed evaluated are 3.44 and 0.54 respectively which corroborates the fact that drainage pattern is not influenced by the geological evolutions and disturbances in the recent past. The drainage density of 2.68 kmꞏkm−2 indicates impermeable subsoil material with sparse vegetation and moderate to low relief. Elongation ratio of 0.956 infers the basin to be closer to a circular shape. The geologic stage of development and erosion proneness of the watershed is quantified by hypsometric integral (HI) bearing value as 0.5, indicating the landscape to be uniform and in early mature stage. The study prioritizes eight sub-watersheds as high, medium and low for taking up soil and water conservation activities. Hence, remote sensing applications proved to be highly useful in extracting the precise data for the evaluation and analysis of watershed characteristics.

Determination of morphological parameters of Tidi watershed using remote sensing and geographic information system approaches

“…Nearly similar results were also reported by Gupta (2003). A similar geometric relationship is found to exist between the stream order and logarithmic stream length for the Tidi watershed under consideration which further indicates the area to be having uniform underlying lithology, and geologically, there has been no probable uplift (Said et al 2018). The correlation coefficient relation of stream order with log stream length for the current study was found 0.97 and shown in Figure 4(b).…”

Erosion hotspot mapping using integrated morphometric parameters and Land use/land cover of Jigjiga Watershed, Ethiopia

“…Areal aspects of morphometric parameters have been used worldwide for erosion risk area prioritization ( Aher et al., 2014 ; Altaf et al., 2014 ; Said et al., 2018 ). They have direct relations to erosion events such as drainage density (D d ), drainage texture (D t ) and stream frequency ( Figure 3 ) and indirect ties to erodibilty factor including circularity ratio (R c ), elongation ratio (R e ), form factor (F f ) and channel compactness (C c ).…”

Watershed Prioritization Across Erbil Province for Soil Erosion Management via Morphometric Analysis

“…This parameter is basin lithology dependents and is an indication of the basin drainage network texture (31). The low drainage frequency for the study watersheds indicates that the watersheds are bearing low relief and having conducting subsurface materials (28). It is also evident from Table 1 that the texture ratio ranges from as low as 0.356 for WS2 to as high as 3.642 for WS14 and the rest of the watersheds fell between these two extremes.…”