SNOWMELT RUNOFF ESTIMATION OF A HIMALIYAN WATERSHED THROUGH REMOTE SENSING, GIS AND SIMULATION MODELING

The snowmelt runoff is bedrock to various resource-based economies vis-à-vis Agriculture, Tourism, Horticulture and Hydropower and contributes predominantly to the GDP of the Jammu & Kashmir state. The glaciers in the Kashmir Himalayas have been reported to be receding rapidly due to the Global climatic change. In light of the economic and scientific importance of these glaciers, it is imperative to assess these resources and their water potential periodically. In the mountaineous and inaccessible areas the satellite images accompanied with GIS tools such as Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and simulation models have proved to be of great importence to determine and establish a link between theoretical principles and ground situations. The present study integrates different geo-spatial tools vis-à-vis Remote Sensing (RS), Geographical Information System (GIS) and SRM (Snowmelt-Runoff Model) for estimation of snowmelt runoff in the Kolahai catchment of western Himalayas. Estimation of snowmelt runoff and resulting stream flow from various catchments is of considerable importance for resource management. Hydro-meteorological data of the year 2001 was used for running the SRM. The results obtained revealed that there is not much variation between measured runoff (79.160) and computed runoff (72.909). The analysis of results proves that the SRM model is best tool for computing the snowmelt runoff in the mountainous areas. Knowledge of the hydrological behavior is a crucia