To prolong the useful life of lakes and reservoirs, prioritizing watersheds by severity and risk of soil erosion is an essential index to develop sound sediment management plans. This study aims to predict soil erosion risk and sediment yield using Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model in Lake Ziway basin, Ethiopia, and the model result is validated with lake bathymetric changes. The SUFI-2 program was applied for a model calibration and the performance of the model was assessed. The catchment prioritization study indicated that some sub-basins having the same soil type and land use but a higher slope gives higher sediment yield. This confirms that, in the basin, the upland is the main source of sediment for the lake, hence the variation of sediment yield is more sensitive to terrain slope. Furthermore, the soil conservation scenarios demonstrated in SWAT that reduce the slope length of the watershed by 50% for a slope greater than 5% are decreasing the sediment yield of the basin by 55%. The bathymetric differencing of the lake indicates that the sediment was accumulating at a rate of 3.13 t/ha/year while a calibrated SWAT model resulted in 5.85 t/ha/year. The identified reasons for these variations are the existence of outlet for the lake, floodplain depositions and abstraction of sediment (sand mining) from the tributary rivers before flowing to the lake.
Information on sediment concentration in rivers is important for the design and management of reservoirs. In this paper, river sediment flux and siltation rate of a rift valley lake basin (Lake Ziway, Ethiopia) was modeled using suspended sediment concentration (SSC) samples from four rivers and lake outlet stations. Both linear and non-linear least squares log–log regression methods were used to develop the model. The best-fit model was tested and evaluated qualitatively by time-series plots, quantitatively by using watershed model evaluation statistics, and validated by calculating the prediction error. Sediment yield (SY) of ungauged rivers were assessed by developing and using a model that includes catchment area, slope, and rainfall, whereas bedload was estimated. As a result, the gross annual SY transported into the lake was 2.081 Mton/year. Annually, 0.178 Mton/year of sediment is deposited in floodplains with a sediment trapping rate of 20.6%, and 41,340 ton/year of sediment leaves the lake through the Bulbula River. The annual sediment deposition in the lake is 2.039 Mton/year with a mean sediment trapping efficiency of 98%. Based on the established sediment budget with average rainfall, the lake will lose its volume by 0.106% annually and the lifetime of Lake Ziway will be 947 years. The results show that the approach used can be replicated at other similar ungauged watersheds. As one of the most important sources of water for irrigation in the country, the results can be used for planning and implementing a lake basin management program targeting upstream soil erosion control.
Physical-based soil erosion models are playing an important role in the assessment of soil erosion, transportation, and deposition in the watershed. Most of these models were developed for data-rich areas of the world and they need a measured data to calibrate and validate their results. To apply such physical-based models, the main factor hindering is the lack of measured sediment data. The amount of sediment in the fluvial systems is the result of hydro-geomorphological processes of a watershed and the nature of stream flows. Therefore, this study aims to develop an alternative empirical model that generates the observed sediment data based on the hydro-geomorphology and nature of stream flows for Ziway Lake basin in the rift Valley of Ethiopia. By applying Soil and water Assessment Tool (SWAT), the lake basin was divided in to two sub-basins (Maki and Katar) with 26 of the watersheds within Maki. The SWAT model was calibrated and validated for both stream and sediment flow by using SUFI-2 program and its performance was assessed by using model evaluation statistics. With calibrated sediment flow rates of 26 Maki sub basins, an empirical model was developed by using its respective drainage area, average sub-basins slope, surface runoff, soil erodibility factor, stream flow rate, and average rive slopes. The applicability of the newly developed alternative model was tested by using model evaluation statistics and validated inside of Katar sub-basin. It is recommended to test the developed model in other basins to incorporate with SWAT CUP program to calibrate and validate the sediment yield at data scared area.
The authors wish to make the following corrections to this paper (Aga et al [...]
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