JWSS - Journal of Water and Soil Science

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  Continuous measurement of river discharge is a hard and expensive task in hydrology. To overcome this problem, the stage readings at hydrometric gauges are permanently taken and the discharge of any time at which the actual discharge is unavailable will be estimated through a relationship between discharge and stage. To study the stage-discharge relations and the capability of long-term data in establishing a permanent stage-discharge relationship, and also to determine the best time to measure the discharge of rivers, a study was conducted at the hydrometric station of the Zayandehrud regulatory dam using data from 1990 to 2003. The data were analyzed using simple regression analysis, the percentage of relative error and factor analysis. The results indicated that the best model to show the stage-discharge relation at the studied station is a power function model. Moreover, the model used for every year can only be used for that year. The results also showed that the most suitable times for the measurement of discharge are July, December and March.

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One of our first activities in natural resources management and development programs is to acquire knowledge on Landslide Susceptible areas. The aim of this research is landslide hazard zonation in some part of Haraz watershed between Vana village and Emam zadeh Ali, using fuzzy membership functions and fuzzy operators. At first landslide points were recognized using arial photography and field studies. Afterwards, the inventory map of landslide was prepared. Then, each effective element in landslide such as: slope, aspect, elevation, lithology, landuse, distance of road, distance of drainage, distance of fault and precipitation map was prepared in GIS environment.These data were saved in raster and vector format in ILWIS software and used for analysis with theory of fuzzy sets. Fuzzy analysis was made by IDRISI software, after assigning value and fuzzy membership functions. In this research we used different fuzzy operators such as (And, Or, Sum, Product and Gamma). Results showed Gamma fuzzy operator had the best accuracy ( ) in making landslide susceptibility map in study area.

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Accurate estimation of runoff for a watershed is a very important issue in water resources management. In this study, the monthly runoff was estimated using the rainfall information and conditional probability distribution model based on the principle of maximum entropy. The information of monthly rainfall and runoff data of Kasilian River basin from 1960 to 2006 were used for the development of model. The model parameters were estimated using the prior information of the watershed such as mean of rainfall, runoff and their covariance. Using the developed model, monthly runoff was estimated for different values of runoff coefficient, , return period, , at different probability levels of rainfall for the basin under study. Results showed that the developed model estimates runoff for all return periods satisfactorily if the runoff coefficient value is taken 0.6. Also, it is observed that at a particular probability level and runoff coefficient, the estimated runoff decreases as return period increases. However, the rate of change of runoff decreases slightly as return period increases.

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Climate situation changes over a year cause changes in some soil characteristics and soil sensitivity to erosion. Investigation of these changes and how they impact on erosion can be of particular importance. This study investigated changes in Sediment Productivity and soil factors affecting these changes in Tiregan rangeland located in Daregaz city in Khorasan Razavi province. In this study, using the position of the upper and lower hillside of eastern and western aspects, the sampling with rain simulator was performed. Characteristic features of sediment yield including runoff threshold, runoff volume, sediment and turbidity were measured. Soil samples were taken from each sample rain simulation and features of the initial moisture content, bulk density, electrical conductivity, pH and organic matter were measured. Sample was collected with the same intensity and duration of the instrument with fixed locations, and was repeated in four seasons. In order to obtain the position and orientation of each of the parameters in the data obtained at different seasons, the combined analysis of variance test was used. The effect of each of these parameters and the difference between them were evaluated using the Tukey test, and the graphs in 2007 Excel software were plotted. The results showed that all the parameters of sediment yield during the year have significantly changed. The maximum amount of sediment production rates occurred in autumn and was gradually reduced. Its decreasing in both winter and spring can be attributed to vegetation in the area.

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Determine appropriate locations with accuracy and speed required is for Floodwater spreading very important. The main objective of this research, preparation, use and evaluation decision support systems is based on GIS and RS techniques to identify and prioritization appropriate areas Floodwater spreading in the study area. In this study area suitable for flood water spreading were selected based on major criteria four, sub criteria eight and index twentyfour. Finally five scenario will be provide and assessment (a scenario based on the relative values for the criteria four, and different scenarios four based on the obvious one of the main criteria). Comparison desirability average among the scenarios five indicate that it is Sub watershed (1) In the scenario third (infilteration preferred, water application preference and equality of all the main criteria) had a higher average desirability therefore between Sub watershed 2 in this scenario is preferred more than the other Sub. Of between the two sub watershed ivar region considering that the desirability average, sub watershed (1) and implemented of between scenarios, scenario (1) (infilteration major criteria preferred) were selected as first priority. Second priority for Floodwater spreading site selection is belong to sub watershed 2, and with scenario (1).

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Evaluation of hydrologic behaviour and soil erosion as an environmental crisis is important in order to maintain watershed ecological safety at optimum level. The aim of this study is to evaluate the performance of the distributed hydrological WetSpa model in simulating erosion and sediment transport and also sedigraph in Taleghan watershed, Iran. Base digital maps and daily meteorological time series data for 9 years are the major model inputs. The calibration of global parameters was done for the first 5 years and the model validation was carried out for 4 years considering three month warm-up period at the beginning of both calibration and validation periods. The Nash-Sutcliffe criterion for the calibration and validation periods pointed out the efficiency of model simulation (82.7% and 79%, respectively). The next phase, the erosion module was calibrated for erosion and sediment transport simulation. The results showed the Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency criterion (60% and 64% for suspended sediment concentration and transport, respectively). Overall, the evaluation results reveal the good ability of WetSpa model in simulation of the hydrological processes e.g., runoff, raindrop detachment, runoff detachment, net soil loss, etc., in a given time and space

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Rainfall-runoff modeling and prediction of river discharge is one important parameter in flood control and management, hydraulic structure design, and drought management. The goal of this study is simulating the daily discharge in Kasilian watershed by using WetSpa model and adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS). The WetSpa model is a distributed hydrological and physically based model, which is able to predict flood on the watershed scale with various time intervals. The ANFIS is a black box model which has attracted the attention of many researchers. The digital maps of topography, land use, and soil type are 3 base maps used in the model for the prediction of daily discharge while intelligent models use available hydrometric and meteorological stations' data. The results of WetSpa model showed that this model can simulate the river base flow with Nash- Sutcliff criteria of 64 percent in the validation period, but shows less accuracy with flooding discharges. The reason for this result can be the small and short Travel time noted. This model can simulate the water balance in Kasilian watershed as well. The sensitivity analysis showed that groundwater flow recession and rainfall degree-day parameters have the highest and lowest effect on the results, respectively. Also, ANFIS with the inputs of rainfall 1-day lag and evaporation 1-day lag, with Nash-Sutcliff criteria of 80, was superior to WetSpa model with Nash-Sutcliff criteria of 24 percent in the validation period.

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Drought is an extended period of low precipitation which resulted in injuries to consumers of water and reducing their performance, especially in agriculture. Different indices have already been proposed for evaluating drought, based on one of the varieties of meteorological, hydrological and agricultural droughts, but no indices has been identified yet, encompassing all factors. This study has been carried out to assess existing indices for drought monitoring and proposing an integrated index including main factors of drought and is applied to the Zayandehrood river basin as study area, because of its sensitive situation in the central Iran plateau. An integrated index includes various drought factors such as meteorological, hydrological, agricultural, socio - economical and environmental factors. In designing of this integrated index, a combination of static and dynamic layers has been used. Static layers include land use, slope and soil type. Dynamic layers include precipitation, evaporation, temperature, surface water storage, groundwater levels position, and environmental needs. All these layers are analyzed in GIS software and drought zoning maps is prepared. Results showed that based on values of integrated index, water year 1371-72 was a wet year and water year 1378-79 was the most critical, in terms of drought.

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The aim of this study is to prepare the groundwater spring potential map using Weight of Evidence, logistic regression, and frequency ratio methods and comparing their efficiency in Chehlgazi watershed, province of Kurdistan. At first, 17 effective factors in springs occurrence including geology, distance to fault, fault density, elevation, relative permeability of lithological units, slope steepness, slope aspect, plan curvature, profile curvature, precipitation, distance to Stream, drainage Stream density, Sediment Transport Capacity Index (STCI), Stream Power Index, topographic wetness index (TWI) and land use/land cover (LU/LC) were selected. The validation processes of methods were conducted by relative performance characteristic curve (ROC). The area under an ROC curve (AUC) for the weight of evidence, logistic regression and frequency ratio was 85/8%, 79% and 89%, respectively. The results showed that all methods are suitable estimator for mapping the groundwater spring potential in the study area. But the frequency ratio method with the most amounts is the best method to produce and map the groundwater spring potential. Also, validation of the mappings based on the percentage of pilot springs, training springs and all springs showed that the logistic regression, WoE and frequency ratio, with 45, 56 and 45 percent of spring occurrence on the high potential classes respectively, had the highest validation.

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