Monitoring of 2009 Krishna River Flood using Remote Sensing and GIS

The Krishna River Basin in the south India experienced a major flood during October 2009, which is the second largest Eastward draining River in Peninsular India covering vast area in the States of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. This River drains approximately 2,58,948 km2 , which is about 8 % of the total geographical area of India. In the present study the lateral extent of river resulted by the flood is monitored and analyzed using the MODIS remote sensing satellite data. The extension of river is derived by processing the data before, during and after the flood event in the river basin. Associated meteorological parameters like rainfall, river run off, rise in water column are also discussed using multi-source satellite (TMI/TRMM, SRTM DEM etc) and observed data. The land cover and Land use analysis of the basin is also carried out for the pre flood and post flood scenarios. It is observed that the elevation tends to decrease from the western part to the eastern part of the basin. The variations of lateral extent is well captured by the GIS analysis, which indicates the extent pattern are different at east and west part of basin due to different topographical features in the river basin. Figure 1 presents the increase in the lateral extent of river due to the flood event. This information can be used by the disaster managers for pro-active disaster mitigation. Figure 1: Increase in the lateral extent of Krishna river due to the October 2009 flood.