Sumit Kumar Vishwakarma, Sandeep Kumar Chourasia and Dhananjay Paswan Das
A geospatial technology is a powerful tool for managing land and water resources to reduce the effect of natural disasters and achieve long-term development. In the present era, synergetic use of remote sensing (RS) data with the geographical information system (GIS) approach has been shown to be an effective tool for developing and managing water resources. In this study, the geospatial methods were used to analyze the geomorphological characteristics of the Mahendratanaya watershed, which lies between 83°59' to 84°22' E longitude and 19°70' to 18°38' N latitude. It is an ungauged watershed with a geographical area of 1192.14 km2. Different geomorphological characteristics such as linear, areal and relief aspects of the watershed were calculated from a 30 m SRTM DEM using ArcGIS software. The morphometric analysis found that the watershed has 99 stream segments, and stream order varies from 1st to 4th order. The bifurcation ratio and form factor of the watershed was found to be 4.25 and 0.16, respectively. The value of the elongation ratio was found to be 0.45, which showed that the watershed is neither fully elongated nor circular. The watershed has a drainage density value of 0.39 km-1, which indicates that the study area is highly porous. This type of study will help model the hydrologic response of the watershed and the planning & management of water harvesting structures.