Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 2017, 5, 70-88 http://www.scirp.org/journal/gep ISSN Online: 2327-4344 ISSN Print: 2327-4336 DOI: 10.4236/gep.2017.57008 July 14, 2017 Morphometric Analysis of Gilgit River Basin in Mountainous Region of Gilgit-Baltistan Province, Northern Pakistan Karamat Ali 1,2* , Roshan M. Bajracharya 1 , Bishal Kumar Sitaula 3 , Nani Raut 1 , Hriday Lal Koirala 4 1 Department of Environmental Sciences and Engineering and Aquatic Ecology Center, Kathmandu University, Kathmandu, Nepal 2 Department of Environmental Sciences, Karakoram International University, Gilgit, Pakistan 3 Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB), Akershus, Norway 4 Central Department of Geography, Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur, Nepal Abstract Watershed morphometric analysis of a basin is key to understand the hydro- logical processes. The Gilgit river basin is situated in the Hindu Kush and Ka- rakoram Mountains of Pakistan. The provincial capital of Gilgit-Baltistan is located in the lower part of the basin. Morphometric evaluation of the Gilgit river basin was carried out to study its drainage characteristics and overall water resource potential. The entire Gilgit river basin has been divided into six sub-basins to calculate and analyze the selected morphometric parameters. Morphometric parameters have been classified into linear, aerial and relief aspect. Geographic Information System (GIS) provides a viable method to ex- tract and evaluate the characteristic of hydrological response behaviour of the basin. In the present study the utilization of remote sensing data such as Thermal Topography Mission and Global Elevation Model (ASTER-GDEM), Sentinel 2A image, coupled with geological and field data into GIS environ- ment for morphometric analysis of Gilgit Basin. The drainage area of the ba- sin is 13,538 km 2 and shows a dendritic drainage pattern for all sub-basins. The analysis reveals that drainage network of entire Gilgit river basin consti- tutes a 7 th order basin. Out of six sub-basins, Gilgit-Gahkuch (B1), Ishkoman (B2) and Phunder (B4) are 6 th order sub-basins. Yasin (B3) and Gupis (B5) are 5 th order sub-basins, while Bagrot (B6) is a 4 th order sub-basin. The Gilgit Ba- sin drainage density value is 0.50 km/km 2 , which indicates a well-drained ba- sin. Morphometric parameters like stream number, order, length, bifurcation ratio, drainage density, stream frequency, elongation ratio, circularity ratio, form factor, relief and relative relief, slope, length of overland flow, rugged- ness number, and hypsometric integral are calculated. The results indicate that the entire drainage basin area reflects youthful to early mature stage of How to cite this paper: Ali, K., Bajra- charya, R.M., Sitaula, B.K., Raut, N. and Koirala, H.L. (2017) Morphometric Analy- sis of Gilgit River Basin in Mountainous Region of Gilgit-Baltistan Province, North- ern Pakistan. Journal of Geoscience and Environment Protection, 5, 70-88. https://doi.org/10.4236/gep.2017.57008 Received: April 8, 2017 Accepted: July 11, 2017 Published: July 14, 2017 Copyright © 2017 by authors and Scientific Research Publishing Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution International License (CC BY 4.0). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Open Access