Estimating suspended sediment concentration at different time scales in Northeastern Algeria

Abstract

It is known that water erosion and their suspended sediments transport, generally in the Maghreb region and particularly in Algeria, record very high values; knowledge of these sediments is a very important step in planning erosion control measures. In this study, we modeled and quantified suspended sediment in the Ressoul wadi, Seybouse basin in northeastern Algeria. The study was carried out at different time scales, during a period of 32 years from 1968/69 to 1999/2000 by establishing regressions between the measured sediment concentration and the water discharge at the watershed outlet. The results obtained by the proposed method indicate that the use of two regressions based on means of discharge classes technique reveals very good estimation of the suspended sediment load in the Ressoul wadi, with an error of 3.04% and a specific average degradation transported to the downstream of the watershed of 316.45 t/km2/year in the period of 32 years.