The sediment load simulation of Kerteh River catchment area, Terengganu using arc view soil and water assessment tool (AVSWAT)

Abstract

River flows contain an amount of energy. If the energy is strong enough, stress will occur at the bed of stream and suspense all the deposited sediment. The sediment will remain suspense in the water until the current velocity is slower enough for it to settle down again. The movement of suspended sediment from one place to another place can be applied to measure the sediment load. The traditional method on observing and measuring the amount of sediment discharged by a river sometimes takes a long period of time. But the measurement is very costly besides the limitation of financial and time. To overcome this problem, many simulation models on hydrological processes have been created. In this study, the ArcView Soil and Water Assessment Tool was used to create a simulation model of Kerteh river catchment area which is located at the eastern coast of West Malaysia. In this simulation, 10 years weather data including precipitation, solar radiation, temperature, wind speed and humidity is used as input database. The period of simulations is five years starting from 2005 until the end of 2009. Then the result was compared with the suspended sediment concentration (SSC) that analyzed from two stations in the study site. This model has strong correlation with suspended sediment concentration that measured in the field where the value of r for Sub-basin 19 and 27 are 0.91 and 0.93 respectively. So the result proves that A VS WAT was success in simulating sediment load in the Kerteh basin.