Delineation of Areas for Water Conservation in Peruvamba River basin, Kannur district, Kerala, Using Remote Sensing and GIS.

The concept of Watershed prioritization is the basis of effective planning and optimum development of the natural resources. Selection of priority watershed area includes the location and determination of vulnerable watersheds, the treatment of which can be possible on priority basis with adaptation of frontier technologies like Satellite Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The present studyis anattempt to locate and assess the priority areas of Peruvamba river basin, Kannur district, Kerala to take action plan for development, by interpretation of space borne Satellite data and overlaying different factors in the GIS platform. Peruvamba River is one of the 20 rivers in Kannur district situated in the northern part of it originating from the Western Ghats and flows in to the Lakshadweep Sea constituting a total catchment area of 269 Km2. The catchment boundary and drainage network have been delineated using topographic map on 1:50,000 scale and watershed boundary are demarcated with attention to stream ordering. From the existing collateral data, different aspects like geology, soil, relief, drainage, landform, slope, aspect, relative relief and landuse maps were prepared using Arc GIS software. Land use and land cover map is prepared from IRS LISSIII FCC by supervised classification in Erdas Imagine software. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is used to get vegetation and period of growth. Weightage are assigned for different factors and a composite map is prepared by overlaying in IDRISI platform and reclassified to bring out the result and finaloutput. Appropriate suggestions are made for future development. By overlaying the Panchayat boundary on the Watershed map, it is derived that watersheds of Kankole-Allappandamba, Peringome-Vayakara, Eramam-Kuttur and Periyaram Panchayats should be prioritized. This will be useful for developmental planning by the Administrators and Agriculture Dept.