Document Type : Research Article
Authors
Agricultural and Natural Resources University of Ramin, Khuzestan
Abstract
Introduction: During the last decades, important research efforts were conducted to identify and quantify the contribution of different sources delivering suspended sediment to the rivers. This knowledge also proved to be essential to provide estimations of catchment sediment budgets. The type of sources (i.e. soil types, rock types, and land uses) to discriminate depends on the local catchment context. Generally, the targeting of sediment management strategies is a key requirement in developing countries because of the limited resources available. Proper implementation of the soil conservation plans and sediment control programs should be done to inform of the relative importance of contribution the sediment resources as well as identification of crisis centers in the watersheds. During the last decades, this approach has been increasingly applied to identify and ‘trace’ several distinctive characteristics of the source material that can be compared to the same characteristics measured on river suspended sediment samples. Todays, fingerprinting techniques, provide an appropriate method for rapid and low cost information on main sources of sediment.
Materials and Methods: in this study, the mentioned technique in the contribution of sediment resources, identify the critical units using the seven geochemical tracers' properties in the Dare Anar basin of Baghmalek in the Khuzestan province. The focus of this paper is upon quantifying the sources of suspended sediment transported on the Bakhmalek River in order to help guide future surface water sediment reduction efforts for turbidity-impaired streams. The statistical methods were used by the comparison of means and discriminant analysis, to select the optimal combination of tracers and contribution sediment sources. The geochemical tracers tested for their ability to distinguish between sediment sources with the Kruskal–Wallis one-way analysis of variance H test, which is able to test for the independence of more than two variables without presuming either normal or non-normal distributions. Tracers proving significance (p<0.05) between sources were retained. Tracers passing the Kruskal–Wallis H test that were non-conservative (suspended sediment tracer values that were not bracketed by sediment source tracer values) and removed before the performance of the mixing analysis. Tracers passing the first stage of statistical analysis were entered into a stepwise Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) intended to optimize the number used in the mixing model. This analysis results in the smallest combination of tracers that are capable of correctly distinguishing 100% of the sources through the minimization of Wilks’ Lambda (Collins et al.1998). The analysis was run separately for each drainage basin using IBM SPSS Statistics v. 20.0. From the seven measurement fingerprinting properties, three of them were selected for geology formations and land use by statistics method such as discriminate analysis and compare means tests. Then, a portion of each source determinate by mixed models.
Results: Outputs from the discriminant function analysis show the discriminatory power of the final composite of tracers to be 100% successful in the sources classification for Catchment. Finally, among the seven selected tracer included the Lead, Zinc, Copper, Iron, Manganese, Nickel, and Chromium, have identified sediment sources by three elements included the Copper, Manganese, and Iron the amount 54.7, 31 and 14.3 percent respectively. Quaternary and Gachsaran formations, having the highest share in the sedimentary; the aspect ratio was 1.4 and 1.38 respectively. The poor pasture and forest land uses were responsible the highest and the lowest values of the basin sediment with 71.5 and 0.3 percent, respectively.
Conclusion: The mitigation of nonpoint-source pollutants, such as sediment, in larger basins is rarely a straightforward procedure due to the number of sources and erosional processes contributing to their concentration in waterways. Therefore, the fingerprinting techniques with the relative efficiency 98.2 percent, having the high accuracy and precision in determinate appropriate method to sediment sources basin and separated of the sediment active units. Low relative error and high model efficiency coefficient confirm the results. Also the field observation is the same as model results. The results were indicating the environmental management strategies must be comprehensive for the study area, that need to reduce surface erosion and hill-slope/channel connectivity and the control gullies development by the commercial cultivation and the range reclamation. Sediment fingerprinting revealed that stream bank erosion in general, and of legacy sediments in particular, from Quaternary and Gachsaran formations to Baghmalek River is at the root of the regional sediment loading problem.
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