By increasing the intensity of rainfall, runoff, which is considered as a very important factor in soil erosion process, occurs. Climate, geometrical characteristics of watershed, geological formations, soil, vegetation and land use are among factors affecting runoff generation. Although in plots under rainfall simulation, the experiment time is more limited and the effect of rainfall duration on the results is more tangible, this effect has been less considered. The present study was therefore conducted to evaluate the effect of rainfall duration in 6 levels of 5, 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30 minutes with 3 replications under constant rainfall intensity of 40 millimeter per hour on runoff parameters including commencement time, volume, coefficient and end time and sediment concentration. The field plots under rainfall simulation located in an eastern highland slope of Kojour Watershed were selected to achieve the study purposes. The Results indicated that the runoff parameters were significantly increased (p≥0.05) with increasing rainfall duration while the rate of increase was not the same in different rainfall duration levels. In other words, under the present study conditions, the turning point of hydrological response to rainfall duration was occurred between 25-30 minutes, where the gradient of runoff parameters with rainfall duration was considerably increased. The results also showed that the sediment concentration decreased with increasing rainfall duration.
Suspended sediment (SS) is an essential indicator for assessing watershed health. However, the temporal variation of SS, called sediment graph (SG) using readily available data, is not always considered, particularly in un-gauged watersheds, which are many in developing countries. Since field measurements of SS are time-consuming and costly, the synthetic SG seems to be a promising alternative. Therefore, it is essential to have reliable SS data for watershed management. This study aimed at simulating SGs through conceptual analysis of soil erosion and sediment yield at the watershed scale. To that end, soil erosion, sediment yield, and sediment routing were modeled using 38 storm events collected during 2011 and 2019 at the Galazchai Watershed in West Azerbaijan Province, Iran. Initially, the Time-Area Method (TAM) was applied, and then two strategies were considered to improve the TAM performance, including RUSLE and sediment delivery ratio (SDR) using gradient ratio and WaTEM/SEDEM methods. Comparing simulated SGs with recorded ones showed that the SDR-based method had the lowest relative error in time to peak and base time, but the peak value had the highest relative error. Results also showed that TAM developed using the spatially distributed travel time method had a better performance than the channel longitudinal profile method. Overall, TAM could not simulate the temporal variation of sediment and needs further research.
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