1Department of Farm Engineering, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi-221 005, Uttar Pradesh
2National Institute of Hydrology, Roorkee-247 667, Uttarakhand
The present study has been carried out to map the land use/land cover, soil, geology and hydrogeology of the Sonar sub-basin using IRS-P6 LISS III images of October-November 2006. It indicated that about 23% of Sonar sub-basin is covered by forest which is mainly concentrated in the lower part of the basin i.e in the south-west region and sparsely spread in north-east and south-east regions. Agricultural land covers 63.2% of the sonar sub basin and is mainly occupied by two soil groups’ i.e ID 247 and ID 283. This land is situated in the lower middle to lower part i.e. toward central to north part of the entire basin. The soil ID 247 covering 25% of the basin is a loamy shallow soil with excessive drainage and quite vulnerable to erosion, whereas soil ID 283 covering 21% of the basin is a deep moderately drained clayey soil on gently sloping plain lands having moderate erosion. The geology of the basin is mainly occupied by three groups basaltic flow, ganurgarh (simrawal) shale covers or sandstone. The basaltic flows of deccan trap covers an area of 1064 km2. The ganurgarh (simrawal) shale covers an area of 219.82 km2 and the sandstone covers 200 km2. Most parts of the Sonar sub-basin (1399 km2) have low to moderately high permeability and showed poor to moderately good groundwater potential. Whereas a small part of the Sonar sub-basin of area (139 km2) showed good to excellent ground water potential.
Land use/land cover, soil map, geology, hydrogeology, remote sensing, GIS
