Application of vectors for suitability of landforms in siting surface water harvesting structures

The Survey of India toposheet number 64 G/12 was used as a source of information pertaining to contours, urban features, drainage and lakes and surface water harvesting structures. The commercially available software Surfer was used in this study. Contours were digitized, on screen, from the scanned base map. These data were then interpolated to obtain intermediate contour lines. Using the contour data, a wireframe map was generated to visualize the topography and ground slope variation in three-dimension. Vectors are emplaced over contour and wireframe maps to evaluate the gradient variation in topography. It is evident that the ground slope facilitates the movement of surface water runoff, and is directly proportional. The vector map helps in emphasizing the correlation of ground slope and surface water flow for the topographic analysis of landform for the siting of surface water harvesting structures. Vector maps can be guiding tool for the construction of surface water runoff structures/traps for augmentation of artificial recharge. This is a very fast and reliable method to evaluate the utility of the proposed structure to be used for surface water harvesting before actual construction, and it can be of help to evaluate the suitability of the structure for its maximum utilization.