Morphometric Analysis of Irang River Watershed, Manipur, India using Remote Sensing and GIS

Abstract

Remote sensing (RS) and GIS is considered to be a very effective tool for interpretation of high resolution satellite data for understanding and managing the nature of a drainage basin. The morphometric analysis of the drainage basin and channel network plays a significant role in comprehension of the geohydrological nature of drainage basin and expresses the prevailing climate, geological setting, geomorphology and structural antecedents of the catchment area.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

Geomorphology is the science of origin and evolution of topographic features or attributes caused by physical and chemical processes operating at or near the earth surface. Geomorphology determines the variation in earth’s surface from past to present and its causative factors.

Whereas, the term Morphology is a science and measurement of forms or structures which is quantitative determination of landform.

Morphometry is the measurement and mathematical analysis of the configuration of the earth surface, shape and dimensions of its landforms (Clarke, 1966).

Morphometric analysis of a river basin provides a quantitative description of the drainage system, which is an important aspect of the basins (Strahler, 1964). River drainage morphometry plays vital role in comprehension of soil physical properties, land processes and erosional features.

A watershed is an area of land that drains or “sheds” water into a specific waterbody. Every body of water has a watershed. Watersheds drain rainfall and snowmelt into streams and rivers. These smaller bodies of water flow into larger ones, including lakes, bays, and oceans. Gravity helps to guide the path that water takes across the landscape.

II. STUDY AREA

The present study area of Irang river watershed lies between 24°12'00" N to 25°00'00" N latitude and 93°09'00" E to 93°48'00" E longitude with an area of about 2794.55 km2. Irang river is a tributary of Barak River originated in Manipur. Tuipi is a small tributary of Irang river.

The rivers are distributed in four basins which are the Barak river basin to the west, the Manipur river basin in the central, the Yu river basin in the east and the Liyai river basin in the north. The study area lies within the Tamenglong, Noneh Churachandpur and Pherzawe district.

A. Significance of the Study

The area under study has remained unexplored in the field of channel morphology. Hence the study has been a great significant one in the applied geomorphology of the basin.

The major task lies with understanding and indentifying the morpholgical characteristics of the Irang river and its basin related to fluvio-geomorphology.

Study of the geomorphological characteristics of the watershed using remotely sensed data for land use identification/land of the watershed helps to understand about the geological and hydrological potential of an area.

Conclusion

The measurement of linear, areal and relief aspects based on DEM generated from contour and spot height are really useful to identify physical and meteorological characteristics of the particular basin area. In this study, it is observed that the value indicated by bifurcation ratio, elongation ratio, drainage density, stream frequency, length of overland and relief ratio. After the study of morphometry, drainage density and slope pattern of the Irang river watershed is found that the area where slope are steep runoff takes in those places. From the study the river morphometry we can understand about the slope pattern of an area, as water flows from high to low relief. Remote sensing and GIS help to select the suitable drilling area for groundwater extraction.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2024 Karabi Goswami. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.