Prioritization of Sub-watersheds Vulnerable to Soil Erosion in Karjan River Basin, India

The morphological characteristics of a river basin govern its hydrological response to a considerable extent and it also represents its attributes, which may be employed in synthesizing its hydrological behaviour. Morphological study of the river basin explicit its vulnerability to get erosion. The study area is in the Southern part of Gujarat at 73.20’ to 74.00’ East Longitude and 21.20’ to 22.00’ North Latitude and 140 m Altitude covering regions of Narmada, Vadodara, Surat district, the area has semi-arid climate with erratic rainfall of around 1205 mm. The catchment area of the Karjan River basin is about 1538.38 km2. To check the vulnerability regarding the soil erosion at sub watershed levels for the Karjan river basin, it was bifurcated in to 13 sub watersheds. The morphometric analysis was carried out for all the sub-watersheds, individually. Following standard procedure morphometric analysis was done using linear aspects, aerial aspects. Important 15 morphological parameters for Karjan river basin watershed were calculated using spatial resolution of 30 m DEM in ArcMap software. There were 13 sub-watersheds were delineated in the Karjan river basin i.e. 5D1A6a, 5D1A6b, 5D1A6c, 5D1A6d, 5D1A6e, 5D1A6f, 5D1A6g, 5D1A6h, 5D1A6i, 5D1A6j, 5D1A6k, 5D1A6l and 5D1A6m. After analysing morphometric characteristics of 13 sub-watersheds, 5D1A6l, 5D1A6k and 5D1A6g sub watersheds fall under Very high priority, 5D1A6m, 5D1A6a, 5D1A6e sub watersheds falls under High priority, 5D1A6b, 5D1A6h, 5D1A6i sub watersheds falls under medium priority, 5D1A6c, 5D1A6d, 5D1A6i sub watersheds falls under Low priority and 5D1A6f falls under Very Low priority to soil erosion class.