Watershed basins delineation using GIS and Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to the region NI-38-14 Karbala-Al-Najaf Plateau, Iraq

Abstract

Abstract The available watersheds in the vast lands need extraction and determination in order to benefit from them and estimate the quantities of water supplied by these watersheds. The satellite image is uploaded to the NI-38-14 Karbala-Al-Najaf plateau from the USGU website in the form of a Digital Elevation Model (DEM). GIS technology is used to calculate the morphometric properties and output them in the form of tables and cartographic models. The water networks of the geographical plateau NI-38-14 located between the administrative borders of the provinces of Al-Najaf and Karbala in Iraq are devised by extracting a topographic map of the area and calculating the areas of the watersheds and their perimeters. The topographic map showed great variations in the level of the earth’s surface, as the heights of the area ranged between 20m and 120m. The number of watersheds extracted in the Karbala-Al-Najaf plateau is 150 watersheds with different areas, the large area is about 4882 km2, while the small area is about 1 km2, and between those areas there are various areas. The largest recorded watershed circumference reached 580km in area (4882 km2), while the lowest recorded perimeter is 8km for the area (1 km2).