Determination of the river flow in the Kerteh River catchment area from gis technology

Abstract

The Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) has been used to predict upcoming 20 years river flow at the Kerteh River catchment area. The Kerteh River catchment area, was located at the Kemaman district and the river was near to the base operation of petroleum processing in Malaysia. Kerteh River was flow to the South China Sea and thus, sometimes the river flow was affected by tides. Kerteh river was exposed to the Northeast Monsoon, on November until March. This catchment area has the area approximately 27,000 hectares. 28 sub basin was created by using AVSWAT and only two sub basin was used in this study which was sub basin 13 (Station 1) and sub basin 28 (Station 2). This model has been evaluated by using the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency value, ENs, Root mean square error (RMSE), coefficient of determination, R2 and RSR, ratio of the RMSE and standard deviation observed data. The value for R2 for are 0.82. For ENs the value obtained are 0.98 which is, classified as excellent value. Value for RMSE and RSR is 0.56 and 0.44, which is very good value. 11 years of weather data (2000-2011) has been used in this study. Overall, the results indicated that the SW AT model can be an effective tool for prediction the river flow.