A kinematic wave based watershed model for soil erosion and sediment yield

In this study, a finite element method based soil erosion and sediment yield model has been developed for overland and stream flow. The one dimensional conservation of mass of sediment flow equation has been solved based on kinematic wave flow approximation and Galerkin's based numerical solution. Various thematic maps required for the model are prepared using Geographical Information System (GIS). Land use/Land cover is extracted from remotely sensed data. The proposed finite element based distributed model has been used for the estimation of soil erosion and sediment outflow by discretizing the watershed into small grids. The soil erosion and sediment outflow model has been developed and applied to Khadakohol watershed located in Nashik district of Maharastra state, India. Part of the available data has been used for the model calibration and the other part for model validation. The simulated results of the watershed have been compared with the observed data and found to be satisfactory.