Hydrogeomorphology

Geomorphologist increasingly recognizes that the way, water is delivered to and moves through a hill slope, river, or landscape affects surficial processes and geomorphic form. Hydrogeologists recognize that geomorphology drives the spatial and temporal distribution of shallow groundwater. But both groups have sometimes seemed to lack the vocabulary and interdisciplinary tools to facilitate making advances truly at the intersection of geomorphology and hydrogeomorphology (Jefferson, 2010).The drainage basin is a well-defined geomorphic unit of a fluvial landscape. It is defined as a catchment area, which contributes water to a particular channel or a set of channels in a network (Leopold, et al.1964). Drainage basins are created, shaped and structured by nature in some orderly manner, which exhibits the interdependence of meteorological, hydrological and geomorphologic factors. Hydrologists, earth scientists and geomorphologists have made their efforts to understand and synthesize hydrologic response of a drainage basin to morphologic, topographic features and established a relationship between fluvial geomorphology and hydrology to formalize the term 'Hydrogeomorphology'. The term Hydrogeomorphology can be divided into three terms hydro- means water including both surface and groundwater: geo- means the earth and morphology- is the surface expression of the features in the form of landforms. This means that the hydrogeomorphology is dealing with the aspects of water, rocks and earth's morphological features (land). Of these water and land are most important natural resources for human beings. Water is synonymous with life. This is a natural resource and an absolute necessity for the survival of the living beings. Human beings have an organic relationship with water. For living and livelihood beings solely depend upon the availability of water. Water and land are the most important natural resources to human beings. For living and livelihood, human beings solely depend upon the availability of water. Most of the ancient culture of the world grew on the banks of the river. Rivers have been always the major source of water for different purposes.

Hydrogeomorphology has been defined as “an interdisciplinary science that focuses on the interaction and linkage of hydrologic processes with landforms or earth materials and the interaction of geomorphic processes with surface and subsurface water in temporal and spatial dimensions (Sidle and Onda, 2004).” The term 'hydro-geomorphology’ designates the study of landforms caused by the action of water (Scheidegger, 1973). By this definition Hydro-geomorphology is inseparable part of geomorphology moreover fluvial geomorphology, because water is one of the most important agents in forming and shaping of landforms (Babar, 2005). From the groundwater point of view integration of geological, structural and hydrological data with hydro-geomorphologic data is very much useful in finding out the groundwater potential zones with fruitful results. The science relating to the geographical, geological, and hydrological aspects of water bodies and to changes to these aspects in response to low variations and to natural and human caused events, such as heavy rainfall or channel straightening is the hydro-geomorphology. Hydrogeomorphology of a drainage basin is a function of rainfall kinematics, surface topography, morphology, basin shape, stream network and runoff etc (Magar, 2007). Hydrogeomorphology describes and evaluates the environment, in which water circulates, thus providing the information to understand the situation and to make the proper decisions (Verstappen, 1983). Quantitative study of drainage basin provides the theoretical base for the hydrogeomorphic approach, suggesting that certain unvarying drainage basin characters can be correlated to the hydrologic response of a basin. The measurable description of a drainage basin can be grouped in to linear aspect of channel network, areal aspect of drainage basin, relief aspect of channel system and basin form (Chorley, 1969). Hydro-geomorphology is science that deals with occurrences of water with respect to landform. All these aspects are regarded as the potential to describe hydrogeomorphic properties of the drainage basin. Because of non-availability of hydrological data, discharge data and sediment load data over a sufficient period of time in unguaged catchments, various investigators have used the drainage basin parameters to study the hydrogeomorphology of the drainage basin. Hydrogeomorphic studies of drainage basin often suffer a setback due to lack of long-term data. Therefore, there is need to extrapolate the results of few small subsystems to other hydrologically and geomorphologically similar basins, which mostly remain unguaged for want of enormous resource and time involved in instrumentation and monitoring them. Importance of hydrology for geomorphological purposes has been increasingly appreciated among geomorphologists in the last few decades. Earlier geomorphologists were bounded to use different unconventional approach to evaluate the characteristics of rivers and drainage basins to get proper idea of various aspects of the water crisis. Horton pioneered the hydrologic and hydromorphometric analysis of basin and provided a rational and systematic base (Horton, 1945). He framed the geomorphic parameters with hydrologic parameters of the drainage system. Thus hydrological criteria not only assist the geomorphologists to evaluate the hydrogeomorphic characteristics of a drainage basin also facilitate their extrapolation in space and time.