Rendering Lineament Induced Stream alignment in Upper Krishna Basin, India: A Geospatial Approach

Abstract Lineaments play an important role in drainage development, stream alignment and groundwater recharge. These are traced as surface or subsurface features. A linear feature that is associated with dislocation and deformation is known as lineament. The present study aimed to identify the influence of lineaments extracted from satellite images in the Upper Krishna River basin in India. Remote sensing datasets are considered the best option when using image enhancement techniques for extracting lineaments. Lineament studies are useful for groundwater and mineral exploration and also in the field of engineering geology. The availability of high-resolution satellite data and image processing techniques have rendered it further convenient to map lineaments. In the present study, lineaments were extracted from Sentinel–2 images with a resolution of 10 m, using various image processing techniques. A total of 1314 lineaments were extracted from the study area with a total length of 3983.44 km. The analysis of the extracted lineaments revealed that the lineament density was higher in the upper reaches of the basin, where the undulating hilly region is located in the Western Ghats. This finding implied that these regions have a high structural deformation and a higher groundwater infiltration potential. Moreover, approximately 15% of the total stream length was observed to be influenced by the lineaments. The maximum influence of lineaments was observed in the source region. The lineament extraction results of the present study would assist in understanding the geomorphology of this region and the structural control on the streams and groundwater potential zones, particularly as a contribution to water resource management in this region.