Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

PRIORITIZATION OF SUB WATERSHED FOR WATER CONSERVATION MEASURES USING REMOTE SENSING AND GIS-A CASE STUDY

L. Yeshodha, S. Suresh Babu and V. Karthick

Abstract

A watershed is considered to be an ideal unit for management of natural resources in achieving sustainable development. Remote Sensing and GIS techniques play a vital role in prioritization of sub watershed based on morphometric, land use /land cover and also to identify a suitable site for water conservation structure. In the present study, an attempt is made to select suitable sites for construction of water conservation structure by prioritizing the sub watershed based on morphometric and land use characteristics. Various morphometric parameters have been determined for each watershed and prioritization of the watershed is done by assigning rank on the basis of values with erodibility so as to arrive at a compounded value for prioritizing the sub watershed. The sub watersheds were categorized as very high, high, medium and low in terms of priority for conservation and management of water. From the entire watershed of the study area, 12 suitable sites were selected for construction of water conservation structures, out of which seven sites are proposed for the construction of check dam, two percolation dams and three gabion structures. The results obtained show that, precision based site suitability is for the construction of check dams.