Study about Important Tributaries and Various salient features of river Jehlum

Abstract

The Jhelum is a large eastern tributary of the Indus. It drains areas west of Pir Panjal separating Jammu and Kashmir. The Jhelum rises from the spring of Verinag, on the northwestern side of Pir Panjal and flows in a direction parallel to the Indus at an average elevation of 5,500 feet. It drains about 2,300 square miles of alluvial lands in the Kashmir Valley and gets water from various important sources including glaciers located in the north of the valley. The river first flows through Dal Lake and then an even bigger lake – Wular Lake, into which it drops coarse grades of sediment. On emergence from the Wular Lake near Baramula, it runs through an eighty mile long gorge at an Average slope of 33 feet per mile. At Domel, near Muzaffarabad, the river is joined by its largest tributary, Neelum (earlier called the Kishan Ganga), which drains about 2800 square miles of hilly area lying on the eastern side of the Nanga Parbat.