Morphometric analysis, bedload sediments, and weathering intensity in the Khurar River Basin, central India. (22nd March 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Kanhaiya, S.; Singh, B. P.; Singh, S.; Mittal, Preeti; Srivastava, V. K.
• Editors: Tyrrell, S.
• Is Part Of: Geological journal. Volume 54:Number 1(2019)
• Page Start: 466
• Page End: 481
• Publication Date: 2018-03-22
• Subjects: central India -- geochemistry -- Khurar River -- morphometric analysis -- texture; Geology -- Periodicals; 551
• DOI: 10.1002/gj.3194
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0072-1050

Abstract

Abstract : The present study is an attempt to investigate the regional topography and drainage dynamics of the Khurar River, central India, along with the textural, mineralogical, and geochemical behaviour of the bedload sediments. The morphometric analysis was carried out using SRTM data with the help of ArcGIS 10 software. The area of the basin is 309.57 km 2 with its perimeter 83.24 km and maximum length 32.06 km. Drainage patterns are dendritic to subdendritic with stream orders ranging from first to third order. Drainage density is 0.34 per km 2, while the bifurcation ratio is 4.5 for the river. The Khurar River Basin is an elongated basin of small size showing ENE‐WSW trend analogous to the Son lineament. This basin might have originated during the Quaternary Period as a result of major tectonic activities in the region. The textural analysis indicates that the samples are bimodal to polymodal in nature ranging from very coarse to coarse grained and poorly to moderately well sorted in all the geomorphic units. The skewness value suggests coarse to fine‐skewed values, while kurtosis value shows platykurtic to very leptokurtic nature of the sediments. The quartz, microcline, and albite are the chief minerals in the sediment samples with negligible variation from source to confluence of the river. The major oxide geochemistry of the sediments indicate that the dominant oxide is SiO2 followed by Al2 O3 and other oxides that suggests felsic‐dominated source for the sediments. The chemical index of alteration (CIA), plagioclase index of alteration (PIA), chemical index of weathering (CIW), weathering index of Parker (WIP), Vogt S. residual index (V), Ruxton ratio (R), and silica‐titania index (STI) reveal moderate weathering conditions and immature nature of the sediments in the basin. These suggest that the sediments experienced a moderate amount of weathering in the river catchment under subhumid climatic conditions.