Study on Drainage Network Pattern and Morphometric Analysis by Using Hydrology Support Algorithm

Abstract

The degree of accuracy in the extraction of the drainage network and morphometric analysis of the basin plays a vital role in assessing geomorphological characteristics and hydrological processes. The extraction of the exact flow network from SRTM-DEM quantifies the drainage network, and morphometric parameters, which is the main objective of this study. The Thamirabarani river basin in Tamil Nadu, India is taken as the study area. The stream order threshold algorithm is used for stream rasterization to get the pattern of the basin’s drainage network. The hydrology-based algorithm uses a different range of threshold values to determine the stream pattern, which is comparable to the stream vectors of the toposheet. The drainage network distribution with a threshold value of 10000 gives many minor streams which imply dissimilarities with the stream network of toposheet, whereas the threshold value of 20000 shows remarkable similarity to an existing river system. The model with threshold 20000 provides a Stranhler-based drainage network with a basin area of 5664.52 km2. The basin is the fifth-order stream network with many lower-order streams. The drainage pattern is resulted in dendritic and sub-dendritic. The morphometric parameters of the basin are evaluated with the help of an aspect, slope, and contour. The slope of the study area is flat in the east and steeper in the west, along the area of Western Ghats. A bifurcation ratio ranges from 1.05 to 2.42, indicating that the drainage network is not influenced by structural disturbances in that area. The comprehensive evaluation of flow patterns along with morphometric properties obtained from this study provides data support for estimation of the volume of water in the basin, reservoir operation, and construction of hydrological structures. Also, this result can be used to compute watershed attributes normally used in hydrologic and water resources studies. The hydrology-based algorithm can be employed in other river basins to extract drainage network patterns.

A Weighted Overlay Analysis for Assessing Urban Flood Risks in Arid Lands: A Case Study of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

“…The analysis of the drainage density map for the specified study area in Riyadh offered crucial insights into the region's hydrological characteristics (Figure 6). Drainage density, defined as the ratio of the total length of the valley network to the area it drains [38], serves as an indicator of an area's capacity to manage surface runoff. Areas with low drainage density (0-0.42) feature sparse stream networks, which could limit the runoff capacity and potentially increase the risk of flooding.…”

Geospatial delineation of groundwater potential zones in the lower Okavango Delta, Botswana

“…Stream order, as determined by the Strahler stream ordering technique, classi es streams within a watershed based on their hierarchy and connectivity . Streams of the rst order have no tributaries, while higher-order streams result from the con uence of lower-order streams (Erosemiah and Viji, 2023). The importance of stream order for groundwater potential zonation lies in its re ection of the drainage network's complexity and connectivity.…”

Morphometric analysis of Halda River basin, Bangladesh, using GIS and remote sensing techniques

“…Two widely used DEMs in morphometric analysis are Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) and Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) [ [41] , [42] , [43] ] whereas, SRTM-DEM has been widely using due to its higher spatial accuracy over ASTER-GDEM [ 44 , 45 ] at basin scale [ 46 ]. The hydrological analysis tool of GIS software can process DEMs to extract basin area and stream network and its pattern [ 7 , 47 ]. Besides, through the geospatial analysis the mathematical and geometrical values of the extracted parameters can be measured [ 4 , 5 , 8 , [48] , [49] , [50] ].…”