Abstract

Morphometry is the measurement and mathematical analysis of configuration of Earth surface, shape and dimensions of its landforms. The main purpose of the work is to discover holistic stream properties from the measurement of various stream attributes. Dharurvagu located in the south eastern part of Kurnool District is selected for this study. The study area is located in the Survey of India Toposheet nos. 57I/4, and I/8, lies between North latitude 1509’38’’ to 1504’53’’ and East longitude 7806’37’’ to 78016’50’’. The catchment area of Dharurvagu is 80.4 Sq. km, partially covered in Owk, Kolimigundla and Sanjamala mandals in Kurnool District, Andhra Pradesh. The quantitative drainage analysis is done aspect wise such as linear aspects and aerial aspects. The linear aspects include stream order, stream number, stream length, and bifurcation ratio, mean length of stream orders, stream length ratio, mean stream length ratio, and form factor. Areal aspects comprise drainage density, stream frequency, and texture ratio, constant of channel length, maintenance length of the overland flow. Morphometric analysis is carried out using Arc GIS (9.2) software, an advanced tool for measuring the drainage basin, the earth surface dimensions of landform and shape with in the short time. The direction of the basin is in NE to SW. The drainage density, 1.90 indicates that the basin has porous nature and very coarse grained texture and the region has highly permeable subsoil materials, homogenous rock type, low runoff zone, loose soil with high infiltration capacity. The entire basin elongation ratio (0.5198) indicates that the basin is elongated shape and less prone to overflowing. The basin bifurcation ratio is 3.66 which indicate dendritic drainage type. Based on the above results, it is inferred that the area is underlined by limestone and ground water prospects are good. Using Arc GIS software exact representation and quantitative measurements with more accurate results is possible in a less time.

Authors and Affiliations