HYDROLOGY OF THE INDUS BASIN (PAKISTAN) GIS in Water Resources Term Project CE 394K (Fall 2006) By

Elizabeth Ojeh
Region of Interest Geographic Coordinates: Top: 400 N; Left: 600E; Right: 800E; Bottom: 200N Aerial Photographs of the Indus basin from Google Earth. (1) All of Pakistan (2) Indus Delta

Introduction Background Objective Data Gathering Data Processing Conclusions Acknowledgements References

Introduction
The Indus River is the 12th largest river in the world and drains through most of Pakistan. Pakistan is heavily dependent on the river as a major source of water supply. This dependence on a single river system is a cause for concern especially as the Indus River is also a trans-boundary river shared by India. The teeming populations of these countries demand for water continues to rise and the supply from the river is no longer sufficient to meet the demand. Groundwater availability in this region is also on the decline. Overexploitation of the groundwater in many areas is now causing the quality to decline. Groundwater accounts for over 40% of the irrigation needs of the region, while water from the Indus River is relied upon to provide potable drinking water to the 130 million people, generate power and fill the gap in irrigation demand. Dams on the main stem of the Indus River and its tributaries produce most of the electrical energy for Pakistan (45%).

Background and Facts about the Indus

The Indus River originates from the Karakoram, Hindukush, and the Himalayan regions along the north and north eastern borders of Pakistan. The rivers flow south towards the Arabian Sea with a combined annual average volume of 178 bcm (for all major rivers) discharged into the Indus Plains. The Indus River system forms a link between two large natural reservoirs, the snow and glaciers in the mountains and the groundwater contained by the alluvium in the Indus Plains of the Sindh and Punjab Provinces of Pakistan. Climate is not uniform over the Indus Basin. It varies from subtropical arid and semi-arid to temperate sub-humid in the plains of the Sindh and Punjab Provinces, and alpine in the mountainous highlands of the north. Annual precipitation ranges between 100 mm and 500 mm in the lowlands to a maximum of 2000 mm (water equivalent) on mountain slopes. Snowfall at higher altitudes (above 2500 m) accounts for most of the river runoff. The Indus Basin comprises of the Indus River, its five major left bank tributaries the Jhelum, Chenab, Ravi, Beas and Sutlej Rivers, one major right bank tributary the Kabul (Figure 1). The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 apportions the flows of four main rivers to Pakistan the Indus, Kabul, Jhelum, and Chenab Rivers, and the remaining three to India - Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. Because of the socio-economic importance of this river, its study is important to provide information needed for its management, and to ensure that it is sustainable and able to continue support the population and environmental flows.

Objective

The initial objective was to use the ArcHyro tools to evaluate the hydrology of the Indus basin including the effects of climate and agriculture on the availability of water in the region. However, this objective could not be fully realized because of the difficulty of working with the DEM which contained holes in some important cells. The non availability of substantial international climate data for as time series was also a problem. The analysis done here was thus truncated. However, in the process of seeking out methods around these problems, quite a bit was learnt about the many tools in ArcGIS9. An interesting tool in particular was the use of conditional queries to set the value of a cell. However, this tool did not do much good in this case because the problem cells are actual holes and do not exist in the raster.

Data Gathering
Data gathering was most difficult because most of the reliable data for the region is only available commercially. Thus, the initial data for this project came from the USGS seamless data (International). There were several other DEM options, but none of them seemed to download with ease. The data from the download came as 12 pieces of 250MB units that had to be mosaiced together. The climate data was obtained from worldclimate.com which had average rainfall and temperature data for cities around the world. Data from other sources were so erratic they could not be put together to form a modest time series. Climate data was obtained for 9 cities in the region: eight cities in Pakistan and one from India just across the border.

Data Processing
The single DEM produced is then used for the processing. First the raster was re-sampled from a 30m x 30m cell size to a 1000m x 1000m to allow for manageability. Several other sizes were tried before settling on 1000m (200m and 500m). The computer time and memory required to perform such operations was just unavailable because of the sheer size of the region. The area of the Indus basin was extracted from the new DEM using the Extract by Mask tool. However, after all of this was done several times, I finally found someone who explained how to fill a hole in a DEM, but it could not be done in ArcGIS. The image had to be imported into ERDAS IMAGINE to perform this operation (image in blue background below). The screen shots shown below show the sequence just described above (1) Raw DEM (2) DEM after mosaic operation (3) Closeup of DEM showing location of hole (red point). (4) DEM after hole has been fixed in ERDAS IMAGINE.

M ajor proble

m hole in the DEM locatio n Location of Hole after it was fixed

The extracted DEM was then reconditioned, filled, flow direction and flow accumulation assigned, stream definition, catchment grid delineation, catchment polygon processing, drainage line processing, adjoint catchment, drainage point processing and drainage density evaluation.

The selected region contains some area outside of the Indus basin, so to determine the drainage length of the DEM, the lines not intersecting the basin are selected, and then subtracted from the total length of the drainage lines giving 115432401 Km. The Indus basin temperature and precipitation varies significantly spatially and seasonally. The charts below show the seasonal variation in temperature. The location of the cities, like Islamabad in the high plains and Karachi at the coast gives an impression of the spatial variation in temperature and rainfall.

Temperature (oC) 40 35 30 25
Karachi Karachi Manora Islamabad (Katarian) Rawalpindi Lahore City Peshawar Quetta Sukkur

(oC)

20 15 10 5 0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Amritsar

Month

Average Monthly Rainfall (mm)

300 250 Karachi 200 150 100 50 0 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Month Karachi Manora Islamabad Lahore City Peshawar Quetta Sukkur Amritsar

Rainfall (mm)

Name Karachi Karachi Manora Islamabad

Lat (N) 24.90 24.80 33.61

Long (E) 67.13 67.00 73.09

Rawalpindi Lahore City Peshawar Quetta Sukkur Amritsar

33.58 31.55 34.02 30.25 27.70 31.63

73.05 74.30 71.50 66.80 68.90 74.80

The rainfall distribution maps shown above also buttress the fact of the seasonal variation in rainfall (the unit of measure, kharif, is representative of the agricultural planting season).

Conclusion
Although not a lot of analysis was done in this term project, it is important to note that most of the lessons learned were done in the process of collecting the data, working with large raster data and files, grid manipulation, and DEM hole filling. I hope to work further in this region, so the work done here will be continued and used in a further study of the water resources of the region.

Acknowledgements: Dr. Maidment Dr. Tarboton

Dr. Ermac Dr. McKinney Miguel Pavon (TNRIS) Classmates (everyone consulted in the LRC) Friends and Family Almighty God

References:
Pakistan water and power development authority, Annual Report 1999 2000, 2001 Asim R. Khan, M. Kaleem Ullah, Saim Muhammad, Water availability and some macro level issues related to water resources planning and management in the Indus basin irrigation system in Pakistan 2002 Global water Partneship, Draft South Asia Water Vision 2025 Country Report Pakistan, 2000