Erodibility Prioritization and Mapping of a Mid Himalayan Watershed Using Technique of Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)

The productivity of soils is drastically affected owing to soil erosion in human activities in the decline of the Western Nayar watershed situated in the Pauri district of Uttarakhand. Therefore, evaluation of these erodible areas is of utmost importance so that the preventive measures can be taken accordingly. It assessed the sub-basins in the basin using morphometric parameters and several multi- criteria decision-making models, such as Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), Utilizing Advanced Space Thermal Emission Radiometer (ASTER) data and a 30 m Digital Elevation Model (DEM), morphometric parameters were extracted and analyzed. To test the MCDM methods, percent and intensity of change indices were adopted. The ranking results were such that sub-watershed 2 was ranked at top as the most susceptible to erosion for TOPSIS model,In general, the morphometric parameters were effective for identifying erosion-prone areas.