Watershed Management: A Geospatial Technological Approach

Watershed is a geo-hydrological unit draining runoff water at a common point and it could be demarcated based on ridge line. Watershed approach for optimal planning, development and management aims at harnessing resource for sustainable development and better living. The factors that play a greater role in planning and development process of a watershed are its size, shape, physiography, climate, rainfall, slope, drainage, geomorphology, land use/land cover, soils, runoff and groundwater etc. Watershed management is unique approach for development of rainfed areas on sustainable basis. The fastly emerging spatial information technology (SIT) has effective tools to overcome most of the problems of land and water resources planning on account of usage of conventional methods of data management. SIT permits interactive querying and mapping of spatially referenced information and its main purpose is to deliver the geographic information on different areas, allowing users to visualize, analyze and integrate various types of data. SIT has the capacity of full range of functions to achieve its purpose related to observations, measurement and description, forecasting and decision making.