A Simple Method for Watershed Delineation in Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve using GIS

Abstract

Planning of the water resource management is evolving from simple local·scale problems toward complex spatially explicrt regional scale. Such problems have to be addressed with distributed models that can compute runoff and erosion at different spatial and temporal scales. In general watershed can range from as little as one hectare to hundreds of thousands of square kilometers The spatial scale for which a model is designed can influence the specific processes of hydrological cycle. This paper seeks to estimate watershed delineation from topographical map using standard Digital Elevation Model (DEM) in ArcGIS 9.1. A simple automatic delineation technique in computer vision application was earned out at Ayer Hiram forest Reserve, Selangor. Results showed that by using watershed function in ArcGIS 9.1 watershed delineation for the Ayer Hitam Forest Reserve can be determined. This exercise is mainly a case·study of simple applicability of GIS as a tool of watershed delineation. However, the results obtained is should not be wise to be utilized in other watershed area.