TITLE:
Practical Method Proposed to Estimate Silting’s Rate in Small and Hillside Dams
AUTHORS:
Naima Alahiane, Ahmed El Mouden, Abderrahmane Ait Lhaj, Said Boutaleb
KEYWORDS:
Small Dams, Evaluate Silting, Bathymetry, Triangulation
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Water Resource and Protection,
Vol.6 No.10,
July
30,
2014
ABSTRACT: The
construction of small dams and hillside reservoirs is a common practice for
dealing with erratic and unevenly distributed rainfalls in arid and semi arid
areas. Moreover, these small hydraulics structures are recommended as a
solution to adapt to climate change in rural areas. They are fundamental for
the sustainability of the water resources. However, these dams are potential
sinks for upstream sediment. Therefore, it would be useful to monitor and
measure the amount of sediments in small dams because it is necessary to understand
siltation and better functioning of these vital structures. This control and
these measurements require the application of the bathymetry or topography
surveys which is too expensive for the responsible of these small dams. In this
context, this paper proposes a simple and low cost method called: Triangulation
of the estimated silted level. This method is based on direct measurement of
the accessible silted level in dam. This new method is compared with another
method based on the initial Elevation-Capacity curve of dam, usually used when
the bathymetry is not attainable. The results of both of them have been
verified with those of the bathymetry and electrical tomography methods and
validated the proposal method as the most approximate. Therefore, this method
is recommended as a new direct and simple technique to evaluate the amount of
silting in small dams and hillside reservoirs.