Morphometric study of the Dudhana river basin (Maharashtra)

Watershed response to produce runoff by a rainfall event depends upon the watershed characteristic and each watershed has its exclusive characteristics. However, most of the watersheds lacks in the facility of recording runoff, in such a case, morphometric parameters of a watershed are valuable information to evaluate watershed capacity to produce runoff. Therefore, in the present study a morphometric analysis has been carried out to determine the drainage basin characteristics of the Dudhana River, a sub-tributary of the Godavari River in the Geographic Information System (GIS) environment. This catchment was divided into seven sub-basins for the analysis: viz. sub-basin 1 to 7. The drainage pattern of the sub-basins are dendrite and parallel. The basin is of seventh order stream and lower order streams mostly dominate the basin. The mean bifurcation ratio indicates that the drainage pattern is not much influenced by geological structures. The shape parameters also reveal the elongation of the basin and sub-basins.