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 feature. A linear feature that is associated with dislocation and deformation is known as lineament. The present study was aimed to identify the influence of lineaments extracted from satellite images in the Upper Krishna River basin in India. Objective set for the present study is to characterize and analyse the spatial organization of lineaments from ASF-DEM and sentinel-2 satellite data which may help to determine the role of lineaments in groundwater flow and to identify groundwater potential zones. High resolution spatial data allows determining the linear features for considerable distance and play an important role to identify mineral potential areas (Mohammadpour et al. in Geotectonics 54:366–382, 2020). Comprehensive understanding of regional lineament maps is important in terms of their prospectivity for mineral exploration (Richards in SEG Newsl 42:1–20, 2000). 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 (Anbazhagan in Bhu-Jal News 8:8–12, 1994; Anbazhagan et al. in New approaches to characterizing groundwater flow, 2001. http://dspace.library.iitb.ac.in/xmlui/handle/10054/16176, http://hdl.handle.net/100/2781) more generally in the geomorphological studies like forms of surface features and structural geological fields also in physical setting and control over the rocky terrain. 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 which is located in Western Ghats. This finding implied that these regions have a high structural deformation and a higher groundwater infiltration potential. Moreover, 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.