Drainage Morphometric Analysis of Bhera River Watershed, Ranchi and Ramgarh Districts, Jharkhand, India

The quantitative analysis of morphometric parameters is found to be of immense significance in river basin evaluation. Morphometric analysis of a watershed provides a quantitative description of the drainage system. This study was undertaken to determine the drainage characteristics of Bhera river watershed (2A2H1) which is a tributary of Damodar River with an area of 268 km 2 . Geographical Information System (GIS) techniques are nowadays used for measuring various morphometric parameters of the drainage basins and watersheds, as they have emerged as a powerful tool for the manipulation and analysis of spatial information. In the present study stream number, order, frequency, density and bifurcation ratio are derived and arranged on the basis of areal and linear properties of drainage channels using GIS. Morphometric analysis has revealed that the watershed is a 5th order drainage basin. The low order streams dominate the watershed than higher orders. This phenomenon causes less time availability for the infiltration of rain water in the upper catchment areas. The calculated value of bifurcation ratio, drainage texture and drainage density in the watershed reveals that the watershed is occupied with hard rocks. The watershed indicates elongated basin as per the value of circulatory ratio. The length of overland flow value for the watershed shows that the rainwater travels a relatively shorter distance before getting concentrated to channels.