Estimating Sediment Budget at a River Basin Scale Using a Process-Based Distributed Modelling Approach

Md Kabir, Dushmanta Dutta () and Sadayuki Hironaka

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2014, vol. 28, issue 12, 4143-4160

Abstract: The paper presents a process-based distributed modelling approach for estimating sediment budget at a river basin scale with partitions of suspended and bed loads by simulating sediment loads and their interactions. In this approach, a river basin is represented by hillslopes and a network of channels. Hillslopes are divided into an array of homogeneous grid cells for modelling surface runoff and suspended sediments. Channels are defined by incorporating flow hydraulic properties into the respective hillslope grids as sub-grid attributes for modelling both suspended and bed loads. Suspended sediment transport is modelled using one dimensional kinematic wave approximation of Saint-Venant’s principles of conservation of mass and momentum. Transport capacity of runoff or streamflow is used to set the limit of suspended sediment transport rate. Bed load in channels is estimated based on the instantaneous water and hydraulic parameters. Fractional interchange between suspended load and bed load is then back calculated. The performance of the model was evaluated through a case study application in a large river basin in Japan. The model satisfactorily calculated the sediment transport and total sediment budget in the basin. The simulated bed load was found to be reasonable and consistent with the water flow and suspended sediment flux. The results showed the bed load can be expressed as a linear function of the suspended load. The fractions of different sediment loads also exhibit linear relationships with water discharge for the rising and recession limbs of the flood hydrographs. The case study has demonstrated that the process-based distributed modelling approach can efficiently describe the basin-scale sediment budgets with due consideration of the suspended and bed loads and their interactions in the hillslopes and channels. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014

Keywords: Process-based hydrological model; Sediment budget; Sediment dynamics; Suspended load and bed load interactions; Abukuma River basin (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-014-0734-8 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:28:y:2014:i:12:p:4143-4160

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-014-0734-8

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().