SRTM DEM and spatial multi-criteria evaluation in GIS for fish habitat suitability mapping: Arunachal Pradesh (Eastern Himalaya), India

The Digital Elevation Model (DEM) can precisely represent hydro-geomorphological parameters for fish habitat inventory. The GIS technique equipped by Spatial Multi-Criteria Evaluation (SMCE) model helps in processing the selected parameters for fish habitat suitability mapping. In the present work DEM of the Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) using Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) technique is used for parameter inventory of the fish habitat in lotic system. Arunachal Pradesh (Eastern Himalaya) in the North-East region of India has been selected for this exercise. Information like stream network, stream slope, stream elevation and stream length are derived from SRTM DEM. The stream lengths under each category of stream slope and stream elevation are analysed. The state Arunachal Pradesh with total area of 83743 km2 has 29003.23 km of river length, distributed in the range of 0? to 40? gradients and 107 m to 5699 m elevations. Since the studied parameters fluctuate between wide ranges, there is high variation in habitat characters as well as probability of species speciation and thereby diversification. The total stream length under suitable category is 62.69%, moderately suitable 21.42% and less suitable 15.89%. This study of fish habitat using geomorphological and hydrological parameters may be termed as ICHTHYOGEOMORPHOLOGY