Sub-watershed prioritization for soil erosion potentiality estimation in tenughat catchment, India

Abstract

Soil erosion is a concern in the Tenughat watershed, a sub-basin of the River Damodar. Watershed prioritizing based on erosion potential appraisal utilizing morphometric parameters can play an essential role in natural resource sustainability. The present study makes an attempt to analyze characterization and prioritization of sub-watersheds based on morphometric parameters, in an environment of Fuzzy AHP, Geographical Information System (GIS), with the help of compound parameter in the Tenughat watershed of Jharkhand state, India. The sediment delivery ratio (SDR) model has been applied to explain the variability of soil erosion. A set of 14 morphometric parameters characterized over twenty eight sub-watersheds using geospatial data with the help of GIS software. The rank of each sub-watershed was determined by multiplying the values of morphometric parameters with weights calculated using compound parameter. Based on the prioritization approach the entire watershed has been characterized into five potential erosion zones, i.e., very high, high, medium, low and very low. The results revealed that about 7.75% of area covering four sub-watersheds (SW5, SW6, SW9 and SW16) falls under very high potential zone and six sub-watersheds (SW1, SW2, SW7, SW8, SW18 and SW24) with 34.11% area have very low potential of soil erosion. Furthermore, the findings give useful information for watershed managers, allowing them to make more informed decisions based on the watershed's features.

Keywords:

• Sub-watershed
• morphometric parameters
• sediment delivery ratio
• GIS
• fuzzy AHP
• compound parameter