Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

SOIL MOISTURE ACCOUNTING BASED SEDIMENT YIELD MODELLING OF ARID DRAINAGE BASIN OF RAJASTHAN, INDIA

P.R. Patil, S.K. Mishra, R.L. Bhardwaj, H.V.S. Shekhawatand J.K. Sharma

Abstract

This study evaluates the adequacy of soil moisture accounting based sediment graph models (SMA-SGMs) for an arid upland drainage basin of 1520 km2, those are originally evaluated for humid/sub-humid watersheds of size as large as 28 km2. These SGMs fit realistic sediment graphs (SGs) with Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) of 92.18 to 95.66%, besides conserving their mass closely. These SGMs are physically more plausible and precise than the conventional regression relations. Thus, proposed models proves their efficacy over arid Jasnagar sub-basin of Luni river, Rajasthan (India) by simulating and validating sediment response with negligible relative error (RE) in total sediment load/volume (QS), peak sediment load (QPS) and time to peak sediment load (tPS) viz. RE(QS)=7.24%, RE(QPS)=0.43% and RE(tPS) =0, respectively.