Assessment of sediment yield using RS and GIS at two sub-basins of Dez Watershed, Iran

AbstractSoil erosion is a serious threat to soil and water resources in semi-arid regions. Modified Pacific South-west Inter Agency Committee (MPSIAC) and Erosion Potential Method (EPM), as two well-known models, have shown their performance in many case studies. The goal of present study is to assess the efficiency of these methods for estimating the sediments yield and erosion intensity within short-term and long-term timeframes over two sub-basins of Dez watershed, west of Iran. The results showed that the study area can be categorized into slight, moderate, high and very high erosion zones. Almost half of the study area is highly susceptible to erosion due to the geological formations and land cover. Moreover, the long-term (i.e. 30 years) sediment yield of 387 and 615 (kton)y−1 estimated by MPSIAC and EPM models demonstrated the superiority of EPM. Compared to the measured value of 612 (kton)y−1, the performance of EPM was astonishing. By splitting the dataset into six periods of five years, the sediment yield was predicted in short-term periods by both aforementioned methods. Such segmentation provides the opportunity to evaluate the impact of extreme flooding events on the models performances. The results showed that both models failed in estimation of sediment load during flood conditions. Nevertheless, the correlation coefficients for estimating the sediment yield were found to be R=0.93 and R=0.85 for EPM and MPSIAC models respectively, for short-term simulations