Watershed prioritization using morphometric and land use/land cover parameters: A remote sensing and GIS based approach

Jaggar watershed is a constituent of the Gambhir river basin, in eastern Rajasthan and covers an area of 352.82 km², representing arid climate. The drainage network is dendritic to sub-dendritic pattern however parallel to sub-parallel has also developed locally. The Jaggar watershed has been divided into fourteen sub-watersheds, designated as SW1 to SW14, for prioritization purpose. The prioritization of the sub-watersheds has been done on the basis of morphometric analysis and land use/land cover categories. Various morphometric parameters (linear and shape) have been determined for each sub-watershed and assigned rank on the basis of value/relationship with erodibility so as to arrive at a compound value for final ranking of the sub-watersheds. Land use/land cover mapping has been carried out using IRS LISS III data of 1998. Based on morphometric and land use/land cover analysis and their ranks, the subwatersheds have been classified into four categories as very high, high, medium and low in terms of priority for conservation and management of natural resources. The prioritization results based on morphometry reveal that only SW7 and SW10 fall under very high priority, whereas SW6, SW11 and SW13 fall under very high priority on the basis of land use/land cover analysis. However on the integration of morphometry and land use/land cover only SW14 show common priority whereas rest have little or no correlation.