CONCLUSION

The study emphasizes the land use dynamics and their response towards the water needs in the watershed. The use of GIS and Remote Sensing has enabled to better understand the land use across various watersheds and to understand bio-physical and hydrological aspects such as rainfall, population, etc. The landuse was analysed for the year 2013, the catchment is covered with 14.4% of vegetation, it could be observed that the Ghats regions of the catchment has higher vegetation cover compared to that of the plains. The hydrologic assessment demonstrated that with high rainfall towards the Ghats, the characteristics such as water holding capacity with lower runoff, higher infiltration capacity are towards regions with good vegetation cover. The presence of higher forest cover in a catchment would help in catering the demands of water during the post monsoon hence catering for all the12 months, this suggests that the flow of water in the basin is satisfying the basic ecosystems water needs and hence maintaining at least the minimum desired environmental flow rather than those catchments which are not catering the demand of water during the non-monsoon months.