Prioritization of watersheds for land and water management in lower Sutlej River Basin using geospatial technology

Abstract

Watershed prioritization involves assessing various sections within a river basin to determine their requirements for effective land and water resource planning and management. To achieve economic effectiveness and technical efficiency, decisionmakers need to allocate investments optimally to the most critical watersheds. Therefore, the goal of this study is to evaluate the Sub-Watershed Prioritization Tool (SWPT), a user-friendly GIS tool that uses Python programming language, in the Lower Sutlej River Basin for watershed prioritization. The study analyzed morphometric and topo-hydrological factors and was designed to automatically identify watersheds with critical and priority status through geospatial and statistical analysis. The river basin, having an area of 8577 km 2 , was delineated into fourteen watersheds (WS1 to WS14) using the SWAT model. The ALOS PALSAR DEM, ArcGIS10.4 a, and SWPT were utilized to evaluate the morphometric and topo hydrological factors of the delineated watersheds. The priority ranks to the watersheds were assigned as compound parameter value (CPV), which was calculated by weighted sum analysis. Watersheds with the lowest CPV were given the highest priority rating, and vice versa. Based on the results WS9 was assigned the first rank whereas WS5 was assigned the 14 th rank. Hence, WS9 needs immediate attention for the management of land and water resources. A modern tool such as SWPT can replace time-consuming morphometric and topo-hydrological factors for watershed prioritization. It is important to implement appropriate soil and water management measures in the highly prioritized watershed (WS9) through the study. Geospatial technologybased prioritization of watersheds (based on morphometric and topo-hydrological factors) has great potential to support land and water conservation strategies.

Integrating RUSLE Model with Cloud-Based Geospatial Analysis: A Google Earth Engine Approach for Soil Erosion Assessment in the Satluj Watershed

“…The complex network of tributaries and sub-basins within the watershed influences the hydrological dynamics and contributes to the overall ecological richness of the area. The Satluj Watershed is significant because it is an important agricultural region with significant hydrological significance [21]. The rich plains around the Satluj River support much agriculture, significantly boosting the economy.…”