Evaluation of an erosion-sediment transport model for a hillslope using laboratory flume data

Climate change can escalate rainfall intensity and cause further increase in sediment transport in arid lands which in turn can adversely affect water quality. Hence, there is a strong need to predict the fate of sediments in order to provide measures for sound erosion control and water quality management. The presence of micro- topography on hillslopes influences processes of runoff generation and erosion, which should be taken into account to achieve more accurate modelling results. This study presents a physically based mathematical model for erosion and sediment transport coupled to one-dimensional overland flow equations that simulate rainfall-runoff generation on the rill and interrill areas of a bare hillslope. Modelling effort at such a fine resolution considering the flow con- nection between Jnterrill areas and rills is rarely verified. The developed model was applied on a set of data gath- ered from an experimental setup where a 650 cm×136 cm erosion flume was pre-formed with a longitudinal rill and interrJll having a plane geometry and was equipped with a rainfall simulator that reproduces natural rainfall characteristics. The flume can be given both longitudinal and lateral slope directions. For calibration and validation, the model was applied on the experimental results obtained from the setup of the flume having 5% lateral and 10% longitudinal slope directions under rainfall intensities of 105 and 45 mm/h, respectively. Calibration showed that the model was able to produce good results based on the R2 （0.84） and NSE （0.80） values. The model performance was further tested through validation which also produced good statistics （R2=0.83, NSE=0.72）. Results in terms of the sedigraphs, cumulative mass curves and performance statistics suggest that the model can be a useful and an important step towards verifying and improving mathematical models of erosion and sediment transport.

Homogeneity and Trend Analysis of Hydrometeorological Data of the Eastern Black Sea Region, Turkey

Eastern Black Sea Region in northeastern part of Turkey has the highest precipitation total in the country, approaching 2500 mm per a year. It is therefore an important region as it frequently encounters with flash floods due to heavy rains. For future planning of water resources, environment and urbanization, it is important to know the expected behavior of hydrometeorological processes, mainly precipitation and flow. Due to these facts, in this study, homogeneity of long-term annual precipitation and streamflow series of the Eastern Black Sea Region, Turkey is checked using double mass curve method and trends are determined by means of the Mann-Kendall test. The data network consists of 38 precipitation gauging stations and 40 flow gauging stations across the Eastern Black Sea Region. It is found that 27 precipitation stations out of 38 are homogeneous and no trend is available. Out of the remaining stations, nine are found non-homogeneous and four with trend. For annual flow data, it is found that 22 stations out of 40 are homogeneous and no trend is available. The remaining 18 stations are found non-homogeneous, among which 5 stations have trend at the same time.