Assessment of Soil Erosion and Reservoir Sedimentation in Nira River basin in Maharashtra, India

Abstract

Safeguarding the water resources from soil erosion is a big challenge due to its nature and scale, which arises from the issues like intensification of agriculture, damage to land classes and other similar activities. Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) with Geoinformatics is utilised for estimation of soil erosion. Sedimentation occurs due to the floods, change in climatic conditions like a global warning, change in cropping patterns and changing patterns of land use land cover, agricultural practices, deforestation, etc. and mainly causes cropping of such issues. Reservoir sedimentation is now a becoming a serious threat not only to safety of dams and but also becoming a serious social, economical and environmental problem. Sedimentation and its effects on dam are occurring all over the world. More than 2327 dams out of total 5264 dams in India are constructed before 1980, so there is urgent need to control the sedimentation process and also urgent need to minimize the operational problem of dam and its health hazards. It is further needed to assess the loss of water storage and its impacts on irrigation as well as other social and economical issues. According to the analysis in this study, 43.70 Ha-m/100 sq. km/year of rate of siltation is occurred during the period considered in the said study. As per the results from the analysis conducted in present study, the soil erosion in Nira River Basin is 43.70 Ha-m/100 sq. km/year, which is responsible for siltation in Bhatgar and Vir Reservoir. The result shows that the overall accuracy of RUSLE method is quite higher with 95.53% as compared to government analysis. Therefore, analysis reveals that RUSLE Model is more accurate and reliable for soil erosion analysis for similar type of study.