Gis-based morphometric analysis of pench river basin

Abstract

Morphometric analysis is important in any hydrological investigation and it is inevitable in development and management of drainage basin. The development of morphometric techniques was a major advance in the quantitative description of the geometry of the drainage basins and its network which helps in characterizing the drainage network. The geomorphological properties which are important from the hydrological studies point of view include the linear, aerial and relief aspect of the watersheds. The study indicates that analysis of morphometric parameters with the help of geographic information system (GIS) would prove a viable method of characterizing the hydrological response behaviour of the watershed. In the present study a morphometric analysis of Pench river basin area has been carried out using geoprocessing techniques in GIS. In this study, Pench River basin a tributaries of Kanhan River has been selected for detailed morphometric analysis. Morphometric parameters viz; stream order, stream length, bifurcation ratio, drainage density, stream frequency, form factor, circulatory ratio, etc., are calculated. Pench River Basin covers an area of 4865 sq. km. Total number of streams are 3621, of this, first order stream segments accounts for78.65%. Since, the bifurcation ratio value is 2.00 to 5.40. It is concluded that GIS techniques proved to be a competent tool in morphometric analysis.