Sediment Yield Assessment of a Watershed Area Using SWAT

Abstract

Soil erosion is a major concern and severe challenge for the sustainability and productivity of agricultural systems, land all over the world. It is directly and majorly impacting on storage capacity and life span of reservoir, dam. It is important to reduce soil loss from cultivated lands and minimize degradation in water quality. Sediment yield is the volume of sediment eroded from the ground surface by runoff and transferred to a stream system or basin outlet over time. Estimation of sedimentation yield is needed for studies of its impact on reservoir storage capacity, river morphology and planning of soil and water conservation measures. The present study has been carried out by using Soil Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), to develop model for watershed area which comes under Pawana Watershed, Maharashtra state, India. SWAT requires large number of input parameters which include digital elevation model, soil map, Land use land cover map, slope map, weather data. These inputs of SWAT have been prepared under the QGIS2.6.1 environment. All these inputs- thematic maps and attribute information of study area have been collected from various Government agencies and sources. The simulated result is obtained after successful run of SWAT which can be visualized statically, graphically, and numerically.