Modeling of discharge and sediment transport through the SWAT model in the basin of Harraza (Northwest of Algeria)

The objective of this study is to model discharge and solid erosion quantification through a small agricultural watershed by applying the SWAT model (Soil and Water Assessment Tools) on the Wadi Harraza's basin of which is part of Wadi Cheliff's basin, with an average altitude of 500 m, drains an area of 568 sq km. Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT, version 2009) model integrated with Geographic Information System (ArcGIS, version 10.0) were used to simulate the discharge and sediment concentration of Wadi Harraza's basin for the period from 2004 to 2009. Model calibration and validation were performed for monthly time periods using Sequential Uncertainty Fitting 2 (SUFI-2, version 2) within SWAT-CUP. Our calibration and validation outputs for monthly simulation showed a good model performance for discharges. Thus the evolution of the average total annual sediment in the Wadi Harraza's basin which will be deposited in the Wadi Cheliff, is estimated at 54.24 t ha−1.