Hydrological Response of the Imphal River on the Impact of Landuse/ Landcover and Rainfall Patterns

Abstract

The river regime is one of the important parameters in studying the physical attributes in a region. The
influence of a river passing in a region is immense. The nature of the stream reflects the natural and cultural
set up of the surrounding areas. For instance soil factors, Land use/Land cover and vegetation, habitat,
settlements, etc. Everywhere land use/ land cover is often altered during the process of economic and
social development and eventually, the morphology and structure of river systems are unconsciously or
consciously influenced along with the land-use change. The changes in land use/ land cover have a large
amount of impact on the nature of runoff and associated hydrological characteristics. Availability of
remotely sensed data has made convenient and accurate to map and monitor the Spatio-temporal variation
of land use/ land cover at regional or local scales. The present paper highlights the changing of land use
pattern in the Imphal River catchment. To identify the changes, Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 7 ETM+
obtained in 2005 and 2016 have been used and categorize the images into 16 major land use/ land cover. It
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has been found that over the periods both rural and urban built-up area has increased more than 24 Km and
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decreased in forests cover area by more than 113 Km . Further, the study also focused on the rainfallrunoff response through regression analysis. The integration of the analyses demonstrates the effect of
land use/ land cover change on discharge characteristics of the study area.