Morphometric Analysis of a Phulambri River Drainage Basin (Gp8 Watershed), Aurangabad District (Maharashtra) using Geographical Information System

Abstract

Geographical information system (GIS) has emerged as a professional tool in demarcation of drainage pattern and ground water potential and its planning. GIS and image processing techniques can be utilized for the identification of morphological characteristics and investigating properties of basin. The morphometric parameters of basin can deal with linear, areal and relief features. The present study deals mainly with the geometry, more importance being given on the evaluation of morphometric parameters such as stream order (Nu), stream length (Lu), bifurcation ratio (Rb), drainage density (D), stream frequency (Fs), texture ratio (T), elongation ratio (Re), circularity ratio (Rc), and form factor ratio (Rf) etc. Study area is Phulambri river basin located in Aurangabad district of Maharashtra state in India. The GIS based Morphometric analysis of this drainage basin revealed that the Girja-Purna is 6th order drainage basin and drainage pattern mainly in dendritic type thereby indicates homogeneity in texture and lack of structural control. Total number of streams is 1616, in which 895 are first order, 391 are second order, 196 are third order and 97 are fourth order streams and 36 of the fifth order and 1 of the sixth order. The length of stream segment is maximum for first order stream and decreases as the stream order increases. The drainage density (Dd) of study area is 0.030 km/km 2 .