Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

MORPHOMETRIC MODELLING OF KHARPI WATERSHED IN THE DANG DISTRICT USING GEOSPATIAL TECHNIQUES

Ashish Guruji and Prasit Agnihotri

Abstract

The Southern hilly part of Gujarat district receives an average rainfall of 2140 mm, which is highest in Gujarat but still in April-May of each year faces a problem for drinking water. Water Resources can be assessed using Geospatial Techniques. For the planning of any Watershed management system, the main input data required is drainage characteristics. To achieve this Morphometric analysis has been done using the Bhuvan-2D platform for selecting the boundary of the study area. The area is delineated online on Bhuvan and Shapefile of watershed generated. In this paper, efforts are made to know the morphometric characteristics of the Khapri watershed in the southern part of Gujarat using Strahler’s method. The DEM (Digital Elevation Model) of the southern part of Gujarat was downloaded from the USGS (United States Geological Survey) website. The top sheets of 1:50000 are used for analysis. The top sheets have been scanned and georeferenced in ERDAS (Earth Resources Data Analysis System) software. These are opened in QGIS (Quantum Geographical Information System) software along with Shapefile generated on the Bhuvan-2D platform and DEM. All these data synchronize at one platform of ArcGIS software. Spatial Analyst Tool in ArcGIS has been used for finding out Morphometric characteristics. The Watershed area up to the gauging site is 460.56 km2. The length of the fifth Stream Order is 36.55 km. The total numbers of streams are 281 and the length of all these streams is 436.72 km. Drainage density for the Khapri watershed is 0.95 km/km2