A CONCEPTUAL SEDIMENT TRANSPORT MODEL FOR ARID REGIONS

A conceptual model of an instantaneous unit sediment graph (IUSG) has been developed for sediment transport prediction in the arid regions. It involved routing of the sediment through a cascade of identical lin ear reservoirs. The sediment graphs generated by convolution of IUSG c ompared well with the observed values for four representative arid sub -basins of the Luni River in India. The sediment supply is related to the effective precipitation and to transmission losses in the upland a nd channel phases, respectively, and the model parameters are estimate d from the observed events. The model can be applied to ungauged flow events through parameterization. (C) 1996 Academic Press Limited