Sedimentation analysis for a reservoir using remote sensing and GIS techniques

ABSTRACT

Water storage structures raised on the rivers are subjected to sedimentation. The sedimentation is caused by deposition of eroded sediment particles carried by the streams just behind a dam in a reservoir. In this study, we carried out loss in live storage capacity of Samrat Ashok Sagar Reservoir, Vidisha, Madhya Pradesh, India due to sedimentation using satellite imageries with various combinations of color bands (green, red, blue, near infrared, etc.) and on the basis of degree of reflectance and absorption of particular wavelengths of light. Normalized difference water index (NDWI) derived through the combination of green and NIR bands images have been used to calculate the water spread at various elevations by creating false color composites (FCC). Seven dates of IRS-(R2/P6) L-3 satellite images covering live storage of reservoir in elevation as per the field records collected from the reservoir site have been analyzed using ArcGIS. The resulted sedimentation in the live storage of the reservoir is approximately 46.48 Mm³ for the span of 20 years (1997–2017). The rate of sedimentation in Samrat Ashok Sagar Reservoir is 2.324 Mm³/ year or 0.9% per year. Reservoir silting rate has also been compared with empirical formulas of Khosla’s and Joglekar’s.

KEYWORDS:

• ArcGIS
• normalized difference water index (ndwi)
• samrat ashok sagar reservoir
• satellite images
• sedimentation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.