Critical Erosion Area Identification Based on Hydrological Response Unit Level for Effective Sedimentation Control in a River Basin

Abstract

Soil erosion is the worldwide most significant threat leading to land degradation and water resources deterioration. Identification and prioritization of critical erosion prone areas is an important consideration for policy makers to implement best management strategies that are more sustainable in future for long term use of these natural resources. The present study focuses to identify the specific erosion prone areas within the watershed with the help of hydrological modeling. SWAT model has been used for the identification of critical erosion areas in the Damodar catchment at two levels: watershed and hydrological response unit (HRUs). The derived spatial prioritization maps at watershed and HRUs level indicated that prioritization at watershed scale is not-sufficient methodology for prioritizing the critical soil erosion regions. The critical area identification and prioritization at HRUs level may be more efficient option to achieve the objective of soil erosion control for the policy makers. The HRUs level based analysis showed that about 67.51 % area of Damodar catchment is under critical erosion condition within which a combination of sandy loam soil with agriculture and wasteland landuse is more prone to soil erosion. The results of this study also indicate that erosion is quite sensitive to landuse and soil type within the watershed with other factor of topography and must be utilize to identify the specific patches for an effective soil erosion management rather than planning of whole watershed management which may be a cost intensive option.

Fuzzy AHP Based Multi Crteria Decision Support for Watershed Prioritization

“…Identification and prioritization of erosion prone areas is one of the important tasks for deriving catchment area treatment plan. Kumar and Mishra (2015) suggested a method to identify specific patches of a watershed based on landuse, topographic and soil types that made the management cost effective. Many other investigators (Shrimali et al 2001;Panda et al 2005) had applied soil loss, sediment yield, topographic or morphological factors either individually or in combination to identify environmentally stressed sub-watersheds/areas.…”

Water Erosion in a Long-Term Soil Management Experiment with a Humic Cambisol

“…Erosion is the main cause of soil degradation (Kumar and Mishra, 2015) and, therefore, causes damage to the agricultural sector and the environment, with economic and social consequences (Telles et al, 2011;Rieger et al, 2016;Bertol et al, 2017a).…”

“…Agricultural production systems capable of promoting soil and water conservation are fundamental to improve the efficiency of agricultural and livestock production and lead to more sustainable use of natural resources (Kumar and Mishra, 2015;Rieger et al, 2016). Thus, experimental studies on soil erosion are important for the viability of conservation planning in a reliable manner (Bertol et al, 2017b;Zhang et al, 2017).…”

Downslope runoff and erosion response of typical engineered landform to variable inflow rate patterns from upslope

“…In these models, variations of runoff erosivity over time during a single rainstorm flood cannot be effectively expressed by the commonly used hydrological parameters including runoff volume and peak runoff rate at watershed outlet. Therefore, the effectiveness of runoff-related erosivity in process-based prediction of sediment output from single rainstorm flood events still needs further investigation, despite its widespread use in sediment yield estimation at watershed scale (Bonta 2000(Bonta , 2005Kumar and Mishra 2015;Liu et al 2015;Singh et al 2014).…”