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Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1339 – 1344

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON WATER RESOURCES, COASTAL AND OCEAN

ENGINEERING (ICWRCOE 2015)

Identification of Hydrologically Active Areas in a Watershed using

Satellite Data
Kumar Raju B Ca *, Lakshman Nandagiria
a
Department of Applied Mechanics & Hydraulics, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal -575025, India

Abstract

Information on the spatial distribution of Hydrologically Active Areas (HAAs) in a watershed is an important input for many
applications, such as hydrological modeling, water resource planning and flood estimation. HAAs can be delineated using a
wetness index derived from either a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) or from satellite data. The purpose of this study was to
develop and apply a methodology to delineate the HAAs in the Harangi (535 km2) and Hemavathy (2974 km2) watersheds
located in Karnataka, India. Spatial distributions of HAAs derived from the DEM and from satellite data (Landsat 7 ETM+
sensor) were compared. It was found that wetness index obtained from satellite data was better able to capture the HAAs in
comparison to the use of DEM. The delineated HAAs will be useful in identifying runoff generation areas and improve process
representation in distributed hydrological modeling of the watershed.
© 2015
© 2015TheTheAuthors.
Authors. Published
Published by Elsevier
by Elsevier B.V.B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of ICWRCOE 2015.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of ICWRCOE 2015
Keywords: Hydrologically Active Areas; Wetness Index; Satellite Data; DEM.

1. Introduction

Protection and conservation of Hydrologically Active Areas (HAAs) in watersheds help to achieve long-term
water quality and also contributes to the sustainable water resources management. The HAAs is auxiliary to identify
the runoff contributing areas and also analyzing movement of pollutants in the watersheds. Although Land Use/Land
Cover (LU/LC) changes exhibit significant impacts on HAAs, not every part of watersheds contributes equally to
these impacts. Therefore, the mapping of HAAs is an important challenging task in heterogeneous watersheds

* Corresponding author. Tel.:+91 9742501982.

E-mail address: kumarrajubc@gmail.com

2214-241X © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
Peer-review under responsibility of organizing committee of ICWRCOE 2015
doi:10.1016/j.aqpro.2015.02.174
1340 B.C. Kumar Raju and Lakshman Nandagiri / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1339 – 1344

located in the humid tropics. There is an urgent need to develop appropriate techniques for identifying and mapping
spatial patterns of HAAs with the highest accuracy and also to quantify the uncertainties associated with such
techniques.
In the Western Ghats there is importance in delineating HAAs that contribute storm runoff and non point source
pollutant loads to rivers. Studies on vegetated hilly humid areas shows that the saturation does not occur over the
whole valley floor even during peak rainfall and also found that infiltration rates in these areas were higher than the
rainfall intensities (Hewlett and Hibbert, 1967, Hewlett and Nutter, 1970). The direct rainfall on the saturated area
explains only a very small part of the total volume of storm runoff (Ando et al., 1983). The remaining amount of
volume of runoff from saturated areas were observed from a return flow occurring from soil pipe outlets (Jones,
1971, Bryan and Jones, 1997, Putty and Prasad, 2000b, Putty and Prasad, 2000a). There is a need for identifying
runoff generating area, which contribute more flow to rivers and it also important for analyzing movement of
pollutants. These areas expand and contract during the course of the year (Dunne and Black, 1970, Dunne, 1978,
Beven and Freer, 2001, Needelman et al., 2004), making delineation difficult. Active and passive remote sensing
data can be used to delineate the HAAs over large areas, with economical and less time consuming. In active remote
sensing technique, microwave radiation emits low radiation from saturated area whereas dry soils emit much higher
levels of radiation (Guha and Lakshmi, 2002, Wang and Schmugge, 1980). However it is difficult to separate the
microwave radiations emitted from saturated and dry soils due to competing effects of moisture content, surface
roughness, vegetation, precipitation, and complex topography (Schmugge, 1985, Bindlish et al., 2003). One of the
earliest distributed model called TOPMODEL developed by Beven and Kirkby (1979), based on wetness index
derived from the topographic data. This wetness index is static and will never capture the temporal variability of the
soil water content. Based on passive remote sensing data De Alwis et al. (2007) delineate the HAAs using wetness
index derived from Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI). Hence, in this study passive remote sensing data
from Landsat satellite and topographic data from SRTM (Shuttle Radar Topography Mission) DEM (Digital
Elevation Model) used to delineate the HAAs over a watershed.
The objective of this work is to delineate HAAs using remote sensing data and topographic data to map the
spatial patterns of the wetness over the basin. This aim will be achieved through the use of a Modified Normalized
Differential Water Index (MNDWI) derived from remote sensing data and a Soil Topographic Index (STI) derived
from topographic data.

2. Methods

2.1. Study area and Data

The proposed approach for indentifying HAAs was applied to two sub watershed of the Upper Cauvery Basin in
Karnataka, India. The Harangi watershed is tributary of the Cauvery basin and it originates in the Pushpagiri Hills of
Western Ghats. The watershed area of Harangi River is about 535 km2 (Fig. 1a). The Harangi joins the Cauvery near
Kudige in Madkeri and its length from the origin to the joining with the Cauvery River is 50 km. Topography of
Harangi watershed ranges from 1635 to 818 m above mean sea level. The Hemavathy watershed is also a tributary to
Cauvery basin and it originates in the mountainous Western Ghats region. The Hemavathy watershed has an area of
2974 km2 (Fig. 1b) and elevation ranges from 1795 to 843 m above mean sea level. Data required for the delineating
HAAs includes topography and remote sensing data. Topographic data was obtained in the form of DEM at 90 m
resolution from the SRTM. Landsat 7 imagery (Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) sensor) was chosen as it
provides the necessary information with high quality and moderate resolution. ETM+ sensor provides eight channels
(3 visible, 1 near infrared, 2 mid infrared, 1 thermal infrared and 1 panchromatic) at 28.5 resolutions (60 m
resolution for the thermal infrared and 15 m resolution for panchromatic band).
 B.C. Kumar Raju and Lakshman Nandagiri / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1339 – 1344 1341

Fig. 1 Location and topography of the Harangi (a) and Hemavathy (b) watersheds

2.2. Calculation of STI and MNDWI

A STI map of a watershed is generated by dividing the watershed into a grid of cells and calculating the index for
each cell by:

§ a · (1)
STI ln ¨¨ ¸¸
© T tan E ¹
where ‘a’ is the upslope contributing area for the cell per unit of contour line (m), ‘tanE’is the topographic slope
of the cell and ‘T’ is the transmissivity of the uppermost soil layer(m2/d). STI classifies each unit of a watershed into
a relative tendency to become saturation.
In Landsat image, pixels are scaled as Digital Numbers (DN) from 1 to 255 and do not represent real spectral
reflectance as measured by the sensor. These values however need to be obtained first in order to calculate spectral
indices. First, radiance was calculated from the DNs. From radiance, reflectance was calculated. There are many
different pairs of band combinations offered to calculate the wetness index. In general Green and Near Infrared
(NIR) (McFeeters, 1996), NIR and Middle Infrared (MIR) (Gao, 1996; Wilson and Sader, 2002; Xiao et al., 2002),
Green and MIR (Xu, 2006) and Tasseled Cap transformation (Crist, 1985; Kauth and Thomas, 1976) were used
calculate wetness index. In the present study the green and MIR band is used for calculating MNDWI, which will
help to delineate HAAs. The MNDWI is expressed as follows:

Green  MIR (2)

MNDWI
Green  MIR
1342 B.C. Kumar Raju and Lakshman Nandagiri / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1339 – 1344

2.3. Unsupervised classification of STI and MNDWI

In this study, an unsupervised ISODATA (Self-Organizing Data Analysis Technique) (ERDAS IMAGINE 9.2)
iterative clustering algorithm was used to analyze the digital wetness map to delineate the HAAs. The ISODATA
clustering algorithm makes a large number of passes through an image using a minimum spectral distance formula to
form clusters. It begins with arbitrary cluster means and each time the clustering repeats the means of these clusters
are shifted. The new cluster means are used for the next iteration. This iterative process continues until statistically
distinct features emerge. The ISODATA technique divided the STI and MNDWI values of the image based on
saturation index of the regions. Table 1 shows the parameter used for ISODATA clustering algorithm.

Table 1. Parameter used in the ISODATA clustering algorithm

Number of classes 6
Maximum iterations 1000
Convergence threshold 0.99%
Initializing Options
Initialize mean along Diagonal axis
Scaling Range Automatic

Fig. 2 MNDWI (a) and STI (b) derived HAAs for Harangi and Hemavathy watersheds
 B.C. Kumar Raju and Lakshman Nandagiri / Aquatic Procedia 4 (2015) 1339 – 1344 1343

3. Results and Discussion

The purpose of this study was to delineate HAAs of Harangi and Hemavathy watersheds based on two different
approaches and to compare the results. The HAAs were delineated using wetness index derived from topographic
and remote sensing images. An average value of STI and MNDWI for DEM and Landsat image were identified by
the ISODATA clustering method. Table 2 shows the percentage share of contributing areas of various wetness
classes in Harangi and Hemavathy watersheds. Index distribution dependence on vegetation cover was investigated.
Fig. 2 compares the spatial distributions of HAAs obtained from STI and MNDWI techniques and it is observed that
there is a region among all land cover types that is saturated and even unsaturated. There is no connection between
STI distribution and land cover. However, MNDWI values change with land cover distribution. The spatial
distribution of the relative saturation tendency is comparable. The DEM agree on the spatial distribution of flow
pattern whereas in the Landsat image the spatial distribution of flow pattern seems significantly distorted.

Table 2. Percentage share of contributing areas of various wetness classes in Harangi and Hemavathy watersheds
Harangi Hemavathy
Wetness class STI MNDWI STI MNDWI
ha % ha % ha % ha %
Driest (Class 1) 242.38 0.45 9401.31 17.57 1147.61 0.39 48536.73 16.75
Very dry (Class 2) 15397.63 28.73 15749.45 29.44 92632.59 31.16 48967.06 16.90
Dry (Class 3) 16196.86 30.22 15281.92 28.56 97964.59 32.95 51198.72 17.67
Wet (Class 4) 11786.45 21.99 9941.13 18.58 68739.10 23.12 70600.85 24.36
Very Wet (Class 5) 7625.55 14.23 2386.72 4.46 25990.19 8.74 62151.26 21.45
Extremely wet (Class 6) 2345.41 4.38 744.91 1.39 10840.50 3.65 8357.57 2.88

4. Conclusions

This study examined two completely different methods of wetness index approach for delineating HAAs. The
HAAs delineating from STI and MNDWI techniques were applied on two humid watersheds of Upper Cauvery
Basin. The use of remotely sensed satellite imagery derived wetness index was able to identify the HAAs spatial
patterns using an unsupervised classification technique. The technique used in this study is advantageous because it
allows identification of HAAs independent of field measurements at a high spatial resolution. Unsupervised
classified wetness index derived from the DEM and from Landsat image were compared. The results have shown
that Landsat image to represent the spatial distribution of saturated areas was better compared to spatial distribution
of saturated areas delineated from DEM. The technique of delineating HAAs will be useful in land use planning,
management practices to reduce pollution sources, identifying runoff generation areas and improve process
representation in distributed hydrological modeling of the watershed. For instance, identifying runoff generation
areas provides a valuable tool for water resource managers in regions with runoff from VSAs with which to assess
and ultimately improve water quality practices.

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