Application of swat hydrological model to assess the impacts of land use change on sediment loads

Abstract

Controlling and reducing the watershed's erosion and sedimentation is essential to ensure the continuity of projects implemented to develop land and water resources and improve sustainability, performance, and longevity. Sediment control is also critical in managing the river basin in limiting the transport of solids, improving water quality, sustaining aquatic life, and preventing damage to downstream aquatic environments and ecosystems. Estimating the potential effects of land-use changes on surface runoff and soil erosion requires distributed hydrological modeling methods. In addition to naturally occurring sediments, changes in land-use types for different applications can be a primary cause for the increase in sediment rates in the watershed. This study used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), a rainfall-runoff model, to evaluate land use/cover changes (i.e., deforestation) and their impact on sediment load under different scenarios. For the baseline (no changes) scenario, the watershed is calibrated using the flow and sediment data measured from the rain gauge station during the time step to estimate the post-deforestation changes at the sub-catchment scale of the study area. The study results indicated that the total surface runoff and sediment yield for the selected sub-catchment in the deforestation scenario with the highest spatial distribution, due to the high erosivity (24% increase) of excessive surface runoff after deforestation, sediment yield increased 3.5-fold. In contrast, due to the removal of trees and vegetation's canopy, the evapotranspiration, leaf area index, and dissolved oxygen transported into reach showed the inverse ratios, and the values decreased by 5%, 24, and 17%, respectively, in compared with the baseline scenario. In terms of watershed management, therefore, the application of hydrological models such as SWAT rainfall-runoff and erosion models can be a helpful method for decision-makers to apply for the protection of forests from intensive impacts such as deforestation and limiting their socio-environmental effects.