Prioritization of critical soil erosion prone areas in a snow dominated Himalayan basin using remote sensing and GIS

Abstract

Much emphasis is laid these days on the sustainable development of watersheds. Sustainable development relates to fulfilling the demand for a given area with respect to growing demographic pressure without disturbing the ecological balance. Soil loss due to erosion is one of the major components that is affected by human intervention and is required for maintaining ecological balance. In this study, an attempt has been made to prioritize the areas within the Teesta river basin, a sub–basin of Brahmaputra river basin in India according to their soil loss rate using remote sensing (RS) and geographical information system (GIS) techniques. The universal soil loss equation (USLE) was used to quantify soil loss from the study area. The maximum and minimum soil loss from the different sub–basins within the study area was estimated as 41.88 t ha–1yr–1 and zero t ha–1yr–1, respectively. There are 53 sub–basins identified within the Teesta river basin which are observed to exceed the soil loss rate of 5 t ha–1 yr–1. The estimates were correlated with observations of suspended sediment in the river at the catchment outlet. It is concluded that soil erosion resistant management practices are needed for adoption in these areas for their sustainable development.