Sediment Runoff Modelling Using ANNs in an Eastern Himalayan Basin, India
The amount of sediments transported by headwater rivers plays a crucial role in planning of water resources. Most widely used methods of estimating the sediment in rivers are the empirical methods, and in India, the rating curve technique is most popular.
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Sediment Runoff Modelling Using ANNs in an Eastern Himalayan Basin, India Archana Sarkar, Nayan Sharma, and R.D. Singh
Abstract
The amount of sediments transported by headwater rivers plays a crucial role in planning of water resources. Most widely used methods of estimating the sediment in rivers are the empirical methods, and in India, the rating curve technique is most popular. The present study is focused on the application of artificial neural network (ANN) technique for sedimentdischarge modelling of a headwater river. For ANN development, daily discharge and suspended sediment concentration data of Subansiri River (an eastern Himalayan river) in India have been used. Rating curves have also been developed with similar data, and comparison of the two techniques has been carried out. It has been observed that the estimates of suspended sediment concentration obtained by ANNs compared to the rating curve technique were much closer to the observed values.
5.1
Introduction
The rainfall-run-off process in a catchment causes the detachment of soil material which is then transported to the river system and also deposited at various locations. The amount of
A. Sarkar (*) • R.D. Singh National Institute of Hydrology (NIH), Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India e-mail: [email protected] N. Sharma Department of Water Resources Development and Management, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India
sediment carried by the river system forms a crucial information for various water resource planning, management, and operation projects, for example, design of dams and reservoirs; hydroelectric power generation and water supply; water quality estimation of lakes, rivers and estuaries; watershed management; as well as environmental impact studies. The soil erosion and sediment yield is one of the major problems in Himalayan region. Water resources planners and environmentalists are concerned about the Himalayan region more because of its fragile ecosystem. Steep slopes and increasing deforestation along with seismic vulnerability are the major factors in the Himalayas responsible for soil erosion and subsequent sedimentation in
# Springer Science+Business Media Singapore 2017 N. Sharma (ed.), River System Analysis and Management, DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-1472-7_5
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Himalayan-fed rivers (Varshney et al. 1986). The rivers emerging out from the Himalayan region transport the sediment at a very high rate. Twenty five percent of the dissolved sediment load in the world oceans is supplied by the Tibetan and Himalayan region alone which forms only about 5 % of the land surface on Earth (Raymo and Ruddiman 1992). In the Himalayan Mountains, as a consequence of loss of forest cover coupled with the influence of the monsoon pattern of rainfall, the fragile catchments have become prone to low water retention and high soil loss associated with run-off (Rawat and Rawat 1994). Keeping this in view, Subansiri River, which flows through the eastern Himalayan region of India, has been selected for this study. Fo
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