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Assessment of runoff in Chandra river basin of Western Himalaya using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques

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Abstract

The runoff of Chandra river basin in the Himalayan India was assessed using a hydrological model combined with satellite remote sensing observations. During a test period between 2000 and 2015, in situ measurements of runoff and meteorological parameters were conducted in the glacial catchment areas of Sutridhaka and Chhotashigri. A good agreement was found between the observed and predicted runoff (correlation R2 > 0.8). The hydrological model was then used to simulate the runoff of Chandra River for a period of 2000 to 2015. Almost 68% of the predicted runoff occurred during the ablation period (May to September). A sensitivity study of the Chandra basin hydrology to a predicted warming climate of 1 to 4 K, toward the end of the century suggests that increased production of glacial melt water would have more impact on runoff than potential increase in precipitation. During the monsoon months (of June to August), increased runoff is predicted due to enhanced glacial melting but the runoff in other months to be lower than present mean runoff, except for the summer months (March to July).

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All data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article (and its supplementary information files).

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Acknowledgements

The first author would like to thank Shri Ravindranath Tagore, Chairman of Dhanekula Group, Dr.M. Ravichandran, Director for financial support, Dr. Thamban Meloth (Project Lead), Ajit Singh, Bhanu Pratap and other team members of Cryosphere Project, NCPOR, for continuous efforts in generating the melt runoff using field methods. The first author also thank ESSO- NCPOR, Ministry of Earth Sciences, for support during field trip. Special thanks are extended to Planet imagery team for providing high spatial resolution geo-corrected satellite images and BBMB for providing the meteorological datasets used in this paper. Work would have not been completed without the data support by Prof Azam, IIT Indore. A special thanks to him for providing his published datasets of Chhotashigri catchment. This work is a contribution from the first author to all the Glaciologists working in the Himalaya and their efforts in developing the database. All the authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors of the journal for the constructive comments on this work. The contribution number of the publication is Dhan/Pub/Civ/GVK-03.

Funding

The first author received financial support from Shri Ravindranath Tagore, Chairman of Dhanekula Institute of Engineering and Technology, JNTUK, Vijayawada and Dr. Ravichandran, Director, Dr. Thamban Meloth (Project Lead), ESSO- NCPOR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dhanekula Institute of Engineering and Technology, JNTU Kakinada, Kakinada, India

    Vinay Kumar Gaddam & Tanooj Kumar Myneni

  2. Polar Sciences Group, ESSO-National Center for Polar Sciences and Ocean Research, Goa, India

    Vinay Kumar Gaddam

  3. Divecha Center for Climate Change, Center for Atmospheric and Ocean Science, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India

    Anil V. Kulkarni

  4. Key Laboratory of Water Cycle and Related Land Surface Processes, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Yongqiang Zhang

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  1. Vinay Kumar Gaddam
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Correspondence to Vinay Kumar Gaddam.

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Gaddam, V.K., Myneni, T.K., Kulkarni, A.V. et al. Assessment of runoff in Chandra river basin of Western Himalaya using Remote Sensing and GIS Techniques. Environ Monit Assess 194, 145 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-022-09795-y

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