Mr.

Chandrashekar B
“Assistant Professor”
Dept. of Environmental Engineering
JSS Science and Technology University
MYSURU 570 006
E-mail: [email protected]
❖ Erosion, transportation and deposition of sediment in a watershed
are natural processes which are intimately connected with the
hydrologic processes.

❖ Soil and water conservation in watershed and reservoir

sedimentation are important parameters affecting the success and
economy of many water-resources development activities in a basin.

❖ Erosion is the wearing away of land.

❖ Natural agents such as water, wind and gravity are eroding the land
surface since geologic times.

❖ Out of many erosion-causing agents, the role of water in

detachment, transportation and deposition is indeed very significant.
❖ Human activities like agricultural practice, mining,
building activities, railway and road construction are
contributing significantly to erosion of land surface.

❖ Water storage structures like reservoirs, tanks and

ponds act as receptacles for deposition of eroded
material.
❖ Erosion takes place in the entire watershed including the channels.

❖ During a rainfall event, when raindrops impact on a soil surface,

the kinetic energy of the drops breaks the soil aggregates and
detaches the particles in the impact area.

❖ The detached particles are transported by surface run off.

❖ Depending upon the flow conditions, topography and geometry of

the channel, etc. there may be some deposition of the eroded
material enroute.
❑ Inter-Rill Erosion: In this, the detached particles due to raindrop
impact are transported over small distances in surface flow of
shallow depth without formation of elementary channels called
rills.

❑ The mode of transport is essentially sheet flow and the inter-rill

erosion from this mode is known as sheet erosion.

❑ Sheet erosion removes a thin covering of soil from large areas,

often from the entire fields, more or less, uniformly during every
rain which produces a run-off.

❑ The existence of sheet erosion is reflected in the muddy colour of

the run-off from the fields.
❑ Rill Erosion: Rills are elementary channels which form during the
surface runoff event due to the concentration of flow.

❑ These are temporary features and facilitate channeling of overland

flow.

❑ The flow in rills cuts the surface, detaches and transports the
sediment in surface runoff.

❑ Gulley Erosion: Gullies are formed due to confluence of many rills

and formation of a major rill. When a major rill becomes deeper
and steeper a gulley is formed.

❑ Gullies are capable of transporting larger amounts of sediment.

❑ The sediment removed due to formation, enlargement and

deepening of gullies is known as gulley erosion.
❑ Enlarged gullies become permanent topographic features. Gullies
are the most visible evidence of the destruction of soil.

❑ The gullies tend to deepen and widen with every heavy rainfall.

❑ Further, they cut up large fields into small fragments and, in course
of time, make them unfit for agricultural operations.

❑ Channel Erosion: Channels are permanent topographic features

formed due to confluence of gullies.

❑ Channel erosion includes stream bed and bank erosion and flood
plain scour.

❑ Channel erosion is significantly larger than sheet erosion.

❑ Gross erosion is the sum of all erosions in watershed.
❑ Total sediment outflow from a watershed at a reference section in a
selected time interval is known as sediment yield.
❑ Not all the sediment produced due to erosion in a watershed is
transported out of it as there will be considerable temporary
depositions in various phases and locations.
❑ As such, the sediment yield is always less than the gross erosion.
The ratio of sediment yield to gross erosion is known as sediment
delivery ratio.
❑ The sediment yield of a watershed varies with the size of the
contributing area.
❑ For purposes of comparing the sediment production rate of
different areas, it is customary to convert the sediment yield data to
the yield per unit of drainage area to obtain sediment–production
rate of the catchment, which is usually expressed in units of
tonnes/km2 /year (or in ha-m/km2 /year).
❖ The channel erosion comprises erosion in bed, sides and also flood
plain of the stream.

❖ A channel flowing in a watershed transports the runoff that is

produced in the catchment and also the erosion products, out of the
watershed.

❖ The total sediment load that is transported out the catchment by a

stream is classified into components depending upon their origin
as:
1. Wash load
2. Bed material load
(i) Bed load (ii) Suspended load
1. Wash Load:
It is sediment originating from the land surface of the watershed and is
transported to the stream channel by means of splash, sheet, rill and
gully erosion.

Wash load is generally composed of fine-grained soils of very small fall

velocity.

2. Bed Material Load: The sediment load composed of grain sizes

originating in the channel bed and sides of the stream channel.
Bed Load: It is the relatively coarse bed material load that is moved at
the bed surface through sliding, rolling, and saltation.
Suspended Load: The relatively finer bed material that is kept in
suspension in the flow through turbulence eddies and transported in
suspension mode by the flowing water is called suspended load.
The suspended load particles move considerably long distances before
settling on the bed and sides.
Deposition Process:
❑ When a river enters a reservoir, it suffers a massive enlargement
of cross section of flow and consequently a large reduction of
flow velocity results.

❑ The heavy sediment particles are deposited at the mouth of the

reservoir in the form of a delta deposit.

❑ The sands and gravels are deposited first and the finer particles
are deposited farther downstream.

❑ The sediment deposits could be classified as top set beds, foreset

beds and bottomset beds.
❑ The topset beds are composed of coarse sediments of large particle
size and foreset beds are of coarse sandy particles. Bottomset beds
are of fine particles.

❑ Generally topset beds have flat slopes approximately at half the

slope of the original channel bed.

❑ The foreset slopes are steeper and are about 5 to 7 times steeper than
the topset slopes.

❑ Delta deposit forms at the mouth of the river entering the reservoir
and may cause rising of the backwater profile in the channel
upstream of the reservoir.

❑ Very fine particles of clays and colloids remain suspended and are
transported to the remaining parts of the reservoir.
❑ The reservoir acts as a sedimentation tank and the suspended particles
settle down gradually in course of time depending upon their settling
velocities and reservoir operation.

❑ In the process of overflow and reservoir withdrawals, some suspended

sediment passes out of the reservoir to downstream locations.

❑ Sometimes river water containing high levels of fine to very fine

sediment behaves like a high-density fluid and flows at the bottom of
the reservoir as a gravity current with its own identity.

❑ Such flows termed density currents or turbidity currents, generally

move very slowly causing a layer of high density sediment matter
suspension at the reservoir bed.

❑ The bottom layers of this gradually gets compacted over a long length
of time.
❑ A reservoir is designed to serve one or more specific purposes.
❑ Sedimentation causes progressive reduction in the capacity of the
reservoir
❑ It may impact on the desired performances of the reservoir at some
point in time
1. Useful Life:
❑ Period through which deposited sediment does not impact on the
intended purposes of the reservoir.
❑ Useful life is considered to be over when an additional reservoir is
to be built to meet the original intended demand.
2. Economic Life
❑ A point of time since the commissioning of the project at which the
physical depreciation due to sedimentation, in conjunction with
other economic and physical factors cause the operation of the
reservoir, to meet intended demands, economically inefficient.
3. Design Life:
A fixed period (usually 50 years or 100 years) adopted by the
designers as estimate of minimum assured useful life. The
present-day practice in India is to adopt 100 years as the design
life of the reservoir.
 Reservoir Sedimentation Control
❑ Sedimentation of reservoirs causes great economic loss primarily
due to reduction of storage capacity of the reservoirs.

❑ Other impacts of sedimentation such as increased high flood levels

due to flattening of the bed slope in the river upstream of the
reservoir leading to frequent inundation and waterlogging in the up-
reservoir areas are serious in many instances.

❑ As such, monitoring and control of sedimentation forms a prime

item in the management of any major reservoir project.

❑ Considering the basic natural process of erosion and transportation

inherent in the phenomenon, it is obvious that the reservoir
sedimentation can never be stopped but with good effort can be
retarded considerably.
The basic methods available for control can be listed as

❑ Reduction in sediment yield from the catchment

❑ Reduction in the rate of accumulation of sediment in the reservoir

❑ Physical removal of already deposited sediment

Reduction in Sediment Yield
❑ Various control measures that can be adopted to reduce erosion and
transportation of eroded products in the catchment are dealt under
the specialized interdisciplinary practice known as Soil
Conservation technology.
In a general sense, the soil conservation practices involve components
such as

❑ Terraces, strip cropping and contour bunding to retard overland flow

and hence reduction in sheet erosion

❑ Check dams, ravine reclamation structures etc. to reduce sediment

inflow into the stream

❑ Vegetal covers, grassed waterways and afforestation to reduce

runoff rates and hence to reduce erosion
Reduction of Accumulation of Sediment
❑ Accumulation of the sediment that flows into the reservoir can be
reduced if arrangements are made for venting out the sediment
through structural arrangements in the dam and appropriate
reservoir operation.

Some of the measures that can be adopted towards this are

❑ Provision of scouring sluices at lower elevations in the dam to flush

out high concentration sediments and density currents

❑ Appropriate operation of gated overflow outlets and other sluices in

the dam in such a manner to allow passage of freshets with high
concentration of sediments to the downstream of the dam and to
catch only relatively clear water flows for storage in the reservoir.
Physical Removal of Deposited Sediments

❑ Deposited sediments can be removed by hydraulic or mechanical

means.

❑ However, for large reservoirs the disposal of removed sediment

does pose environmental problems and also the entire operation may
not be economically feasible.

❑ However, for many small reservoirs, sediment removal, popularly

known as desilting, can be a feasible proposition.

❑ As a typical example, desilting of irrigation tanks of south India can

be cited. Several thousands of tanks in South India, particularly in
Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are in existence since
several decades and are serving as sources of minor irrigation.