Entropy Application to Evaluate the Stability of Landscape in Kunur River Basin, West Bengal, India

The river network analysis using thermodynamic entropy approach has been studied over the past several decades to decipher the behaviour of streams and landscape stability. The entropy-based study has been taken up in Kunur River Basin of eastern India to verify the level of adjustment for its present longitudinal profile to the calculated and equilibrium longitudinal profiles adopting Yang's (1971) theory of average river fall. The verification reveals that the fall ratio is less than 1, which indicates the basin has not yet reached the dynamic equilibrium phase and the whole process-response system sustains tremendous human pressure. It is inferred from the thermodynamic river profiles that there is poor agreement between observed data and the law of average stream fall, and the concave river profile emerging from several scales of process-form interaction is characterized by human interference. The present analyses also demonstrate that the lithological control, grain size and channel morphology influence the gradient in short term and climate-induced hydrological changes control the long-term stability of the total landscape.