Watershed prioritization for soil and water conservation in Darna River basin: a PCA approach

The watershed management techniques for prioritization have a great significance in the conservation of soil and water resources. The present study exhibits the importance of principal component analysis (PCA) for the prioritization of sub-watersheds in the upper Darna River basin of Maharashtra. The paper aims to find out more effective geomorphic parameters of sub-watersheds in terms of the identification of more susceptible soil erosion watersheds for prioritization. The seven sub-watersheds of fourth order and three sub-watersheds of fifth order have been selected for the present study, which consists of 253.86 km2 area. ArcGIS software is used for morphometric analysis of 13 geomorphic parameters that are categorized as aerial, linear and relief aspects. The PCA was performed by SPSS 25.0 software for classification and to find out the correlation of geomorphic parameters. The result reveals that the stream frequency (Fs), relative relief (Rr), and ruggedness number (Rn) are strongly correlated and have an eigenvalue greater than 1, accounts together to 85.507% of the total variance. It also discloses that the sub-watershed-5 has high priority and sub-watershed-1 has low priority; therefore, accordingly they are proposed for further water and soil conservative measures. This study is useful to provide a better perspective for decision-making and guidelines for proper soil and water resource management.