Analysis of hydrogeomorphic characteristics of sub-basins in terms of erosion sensitivity (Case study: Aland Chai basin, northwest of Iran)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Geomorphology, Faculty of Planning and Environmental Sciences, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

2 Department of RS and GIS, Faculty of Planning and Environmental Sciences, University of Tabriz, Tabriz, Iran

Abstract

Introduction: Aland Chai basin which is located in Khoy County and North West of Iran is one of the high erodibility susceptibility basins due to its unique topographic location and receiving appropriate rainfall throughout the year, especially in spring. The primary purpose of the present study is to investigate and analyze the role of hydrogeomorphic indicators in the sensitivity to erodibility of the sub-basins of the Aland Chai basin located in Khoy County.
Study Area: Aland Chai basin with an area of 1147.30 km2 is located in the Northwest of Iran and the Western Azerbaijan province. This basin is located between 38°- 30¢-14² and 38°- 48¢-22² N and between 44°- 15¢- 13² and 45°- 01¢-02² E. Basin elevation variations are from 1093m in the Aland Chai River bed to 3638m above sea level in the Avrin Mountain. This basin is one of the sub-basins of the Aras River basin.
Materials and methods: In the current study, a geomorphometric ranking method was used considering two groups of hydrogeomorphic parameters to rank the parameters. The first groups are the parameters that have a direct relationship with the erodibility of the sub-basins. These parameters include Drainage density, Stream frequency, Bifurcation ratio, Drainage texture, Infiltration number, Relief, and Gradient. The second group includes 4 parameters of Compactness coefficient, Elongation ratio, Circulatory ratio, and Form factor, which have an inverse relationship with erodibility sensitivity.
Results and Discussion: In this study, 12 hydrogeomorphic parameters were analyzed from three aspects of drainage network characteristics, shape parameters, and relief characteristics of the basin in order to investigate the role of these parameters in the sensitivity of the Aland Chai basin to erosion. In the next step, the information of each sub-basin based on 12 hydrogeomorphic parameters were prepared using the geomorphological laws of Horton, Schumm, and Strahler in ArcGIS software. In the following, the final map prioritizing the sub-basins in terms of sensitivity to erosion in 5 classes of very high (<43), high (39-42), medium (33-38), low (30-33) and very low (>30) sensitivity was prepared.
Conclusion: The results of erosion susceptibility of sub-basins using hydrogeomorphic parameters also showed that 5 sub-basins (sub-basins 1, 2, 3, 4, and 11) have high susceptibility. The results of this part of the study showed that the area of ​​the Rangeland had a decreasing trend between 1985 and 2020. In contrast, with the physical development of Khoy and Firouraq cities, we are witnessing an increasing trend in the area of ​​built-up areas. Agricultural and garden classes have also increased in 2000, 2010, and 2020 compared to 1985, but the largest increase in agricultural land and garden area is related to 2000. The study of the relationship between land use changes in each sub-basin and their erodibility showed that in the sub-basins upstream of Aland Chai basin, land use change (an increase of agricultural lands) or inappropriate and excessive use of area capacity, it is effective in intensifying erodibility of sub-basins.
 

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

-Altaf, S., Meraj, G. and Romshoo, A.A., 2014. Morphometry and land cover based multi- criteria analysis for assessing the soil erosion susceptibility of the western Himalayan watershed, Environmental Monitoring and Assessment, v. 186(12), p. 8391-8412. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-014-4012-2.
-Amani, M. and Najafinejad, A., 2014. Prioritization of Sub-Watersheds based on Morphometric Analysis, GIS and RS Techniques: Lohandar Watershed, Golestan Province, Journal of Watershed Management Research, v. 5(9), p. 1-14 (in Persian).
-Bisht, S., Chaudhry, S., Sharma, S. and Soni, S., 2018. Assessment of flash flood vulnerability zonation through Geospatial technique in high altitude Himalayan watershed, Himachal Pradesh India, Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, v. 12, p. 35-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2018.09.001.
-Bolstad, P.V. and Lillesand, T.M., 1991. Rapid maximum likelihood classification, Photogramm. Eng. Remote Sens, v. 57(1), p. 67-74.
-CSIRO., 2003. Australia Advances Soil Cancer, Series Eight, Internet.
-Dar, R.A., Chandra, R. and Romshoo, S.A., 2013. Morphotectonic and Lithostratigraphic analysis of Intermontane Karewa basin of Kashmir Himalayas, India. Journal of Mountain Science, v. 10(1), p. 1-15.
-Doe, W.W. and Jones, D., 1999. the soil erosion model guide for military land managers: analysis of erosion model foe natural and cultural resources applications. U.S. Armey Engineer Waterways Experiment Station, Technical Report.
-Fallah, M., Mohammadi, M. and Kavian, A., 2015. Prioritization of Sub-watershedsusing Morphometric and LandUse change Analysis, Journal of EcoHydrology, v. 2(3), p. 261-274 (in Persian).
-Faniran, A., 1968. the index of drainage intensity – a provisional new drainage factor. Australian Journal of Science, v. 31, p. 328-330.
-Farhan, Y. and Anaba, O., 2016. Flash flood risk estimation of Wadi Yutum (Southern Jordan) watershed using GIS based morphometric analysis and remote sensing techniques, Open J Mod Hydrol, v. 6(02), p. 79-100.
-Farhatjah, B., 2002. Remote sensing and geographic information systems, Publications of the Geographical Organization, 280 p (in Persian).
-Fatemi, S.B. and Rezaei, Y., 2012. Fundamentals of remote sensing, Azadeh publications, Third edition, 296 p (in Persian).
-Feng, X., Wang, Y., Cheng, L., Fu, B. and Bai, G., 2010. Modeling soil erosion and response to landuse change in hilly catchments of the Chinese loess plateau, Geomorphology, v. 118(3-4), p. 239-248.
-Hadely, R.F. and Schumm, S.A., 1961. Sediment sources and drainage basin characteristics in upper Cheyenne River basin. United States Geological Survey water-supply paper, 1531-B. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, p. 137-196.
-Harlin, J.M. and Wijeyawickrema, C., 1985. Irrigation and groundwater depletion in Caddo County, Oklahoma. J Am Water Resour Assoc v. 21(1), p. 5-22.
-Horton, R.E., 1945. Erosional development of streams and their drainage basins; hydrophysical approach to quantitative morphology. Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, v. 56(3), p. 275-370.
-Kadam, A.K., Jaweed, T.H., Kale, S.S., Umrikar, B.N. and Sankhua, R.N., 2019. Identification of erosion-prone areas using modified morphometric prioritization method and sediment production rate: a remote sensing and GIS approach. Geomatics, Natural Hazards and Risk, v. 10(1), p. 986-1006. https://doi.org/10.1080/19475705.2018.1555189.
-Kiran, V.S.S. and Srivastava, Y.K., 2012. Check dam construction by prioritization of micro watershed, using morphometric analysis as a perspective of remote sensing and GIS for Simlapal Block, Bankura, W.B. Bonfring Int Ind Eng Manag Sci, v. 2(1), p. 20-31.
-Lillesand, T.M. and Kiefer, P.W., 1994. Remote sensing and image interpretation, John Wiley & Sons, Inc, USA.
-Lim, K.J., Sagong, M., Engel, B.A., Tang, Z., Choi, J. and Kim, K.S., 2005. GIS based sediment assessment tool. Catena, v. 64(1), p. 61-80.
-Luo, W., 1900. Quantifying groundwater sapping landforms with a hypsometric technique. Journal of Geophysical Reseach, v. 105, p. 1685-1694.
-Mausel, P.W., Kramber, W.J. and Lee, J.K., 1990. Optimum band selection for supervised classification of multispectral data, Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing, v. 56, p. 55-60.
-Mesa, L.M., 2006. Morphometric analysis of a subtropical Andean basin (Tucuman,
Argentina), Environ. Geol, v. 50 (8), p. 1235-1242.
-Montgomery, D.R. and Dietrich, W.E., 1989. Source areas, drainage density, and channel initiation, Water Resources Research, Geography Journal, v. 25, p. 1907-1918.
-Morgan, R.P.C. and Nearing, M.A., 2011. The future role of information technology in erosion Modeling-Hand Book of Erosion Modeling, http://onlinelibrary.willey.com, https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444328455.ch1.
-Pant, N., Kumar Dubey, R., Bhatt, A., Prakash Rai, S., Semwal, P. and Mishra, S., 2020. Soil erosion and food hazard zonation using morphometric and morphotectonic parameters in Upper Alaknanda river basin, Natural Hazards, v. 103, p. 3263-3301.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-020-04129-y.
-Mokarram, M., Darvishi, A. and Negahban, S., 2017. The Relation between Morphometric Characteristics of Watersheds and Erodibility at different altitude levels using Topographic Position Index (TPI) Case Study: Nazloochaei Watershed, Journal of Geographical Data (SEPEHR), v. 26(101), p. 131-142 (in Persian).
-Rahimour, T., Rezaei Moghaddam, M.H., Hejazi, S.A. and Valizadeh Kamran, K., 2022. Spatial Variations Analysis of Flood Hazard Susceptibility based on a new ensemble model (Case study: Aland Chai Basin, Khoy city). Enviormental Hazards management, v. 8(4), p. 371-393 (in Persian).
-Rahimpour, T., 2022. Spatial Variations Analysis of Flood Hazard Susceptibility and Soil Erosion Based on Hydrogeomorphic Approaches (Case study: Aland Chai Basin, North West of Iran). Ph. D Thesis, Faculty of Planning and Environmental Scinces, University of Tabriz, 167 p (in Persian).
-Rasouli, A., 2008.  Fundamentals of applied remote sensing. University of Tabriz, 703 p (in Persian).
-Rather, M.A., Satish Kumar, J., Farooq, M. and Rashid, H., 2017. Assessing the influence of watershed characteristics on soil erosion susceptibility of Jhelum basin in Kashmir Himalayas, v. 10(59), p. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-017-2847-x.
-Refahi, H., 2006. Water erosion and its control. Tehran University Publications, 674 p (in Persian).
-Rezaei Moghaddam, M.H., Hejazi, S.A., Valizadeh Kamran, K. and Rahimpour, T., 2020. Study of Hydrogeomorphic Indices in Flood Sensitivity (Case study: Aland Chai Basin, Northwest of Iran), Quantitative Geomorphological Research, v. 9(2), p. 195-214 (in Persian).
-Roostaei, Sh., Nikjou, M. and Habib Zadeh, A., 2010. Investigating soil erodibility in Bejoshan Chai watershed using fuzzy theory and geographic information system, Geography and planning. v. 15(33), p. 147-173 (in Persian).
-Schumm, S.A., 1956. Evolution of drainage systems and slopes in badlands at Perth Amboy, New Jersey. Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 67(5), p. 597-646. http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/0016-7606(1956)67[597:EODSAS]2.0.CO;2.
-Saghafi, M. and Rezaei Moghaddam, M.H., 2017. Fundamentals of Fluvial Geomorphology, Tehran. Samt, 442 p (in Persian).
-Singh, N. and Singh, K.K., 2017. Geomorphological analysis and prioritization of subwatersheds using Snyder’s synthetic unit hydrograph method. Applied Water Science, v. 7(1), p. 275-283. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13201-014-0243-1.
-Toy, T.J., Foster, G.R. and Renard, K.G., 2002. Soil erosion: processes, prediction, measurement, and control. John Wiley and Sons, New York.
-Verstappen, H., 1983. The applied geomorphology. Enschede (The Netherlands). International Institute for Aerial Survey and Earth Science (ITC).
-Wang, L., Huang, J., Du, Y., Hu, Y. and Han, P., 2013. Dynamic Assessment of Soil Erosion Risk Using Landsat TM and HJ Satellite Data in Danjiangkou Reservoir Area, China. Remote Sensing, v. 5, p. 3826-3848.
-Youssef, A.M., Pradhan, B. and Hassan, A.M., 2011. Flash flood risk estimation along the St. Katherine Road, Southern Sinai, Egypt using GIS based morphometry and satellite imagery. Environ Earth Sci, v. 62, p. 611-623.
 
 
Researches in Earth Sciences
Volume 14, Issue 3 - Serial Number 55
October 2023
Pages 112-131

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics