Remote sensing (RS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) techniques have become very important these days as they aid planners and decision makers to make effective and correct decisions and designs. Principal Component Analysis (PCA) involves a mathematical procedure that transforms a number of (possibly) correlated variables into a (smaller) number of uncorrelated variables. It reduces the dimensionality of the data set and identifies a new meaningful underlying variable. Morphometric analysis and prioritization of the sub-watersheds of Shakkar River Catchment, Narsinghpur district in Madhya Pradesh State, India, is carried out using RS and GIS techniques as discussed in Gajbhiye et al. (Appl Water Sci 4(1):51–61, 2013b ). In this study we apply PCA technique in Shakkar River Catchment for redundancy of morphometric parameters and find the more effective parameters for prioritization of the watershed and discuss the comparison between Gajbhiye et al. (Appl Water Sci 4(1):51–61, 2013b ) and the present prioritization scheme.

The geomorphological characteristics of a watershed are more commonly used for developing the regional hydrological models for solving various hydrological problems of the ungauged watersheds in inadequate data situations. Therefore, in this study to find out the most vulnerable sub-watershed to soil erosion, morphometric analysis and prioritization were carried out on 14 sub-watersheds of Manot River catchment, which is a tributary of the Narmada River. The morphometric parameters considered for analysis are stream order, stream length, stream frequency, drainage density, texture ratio, form factor, circulatory ratio, elongation ratio, bifurcation ratio and compactness ratio. After analysis of morphometric parameters, compound parameter values are calculated and prioritization rating of 14 sub-watersheds is carried out. The sub-watershed 13 that has the lowest compound parameter value of 3.63 is likely to be subjected to maximum soil erosion; hence, it requires immediate attention to providing soil conservation measures. Morphological parameters-based prioritization is in good agreement with the geological field investigation carried out during the field work.