Soil Erosion Evaluation through Prioritization of Shyok-Nubra Watershed using Morphometric, Principal Component and Weighted Sum Approaches

Abstract

Abstract The application of sub-watershed prioritization based on erosion tendency plays essential roles in decision making in implementing management practices, especially in the sensitive difficult remote areas. The watershed management planning highlights the management techniques to control the erosion in the catchment area. Quantitative morphometric analysis was carried out for determining the linear, areal and relief aspect of Shyok-Nubra watershed and its 18 sub-watersheds of Ladakh Himalaya. Prioritization of the sub-watersheds has been done using Preliminary morphometric analysis, Weighted Sum Analysis (WSA) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) methods using Arc-GIS and SPSS softwares. The use of PCA aimed to define significant parameters, while WSA was employed to determine the weights for significant parameters and calculate the compound values for priority ranking. The result showed that the integration of PCA and WSA is robust enough to define significant and more effective parameters with their weighted values for the sub-watershed prioritization.