Erosion has been recognized as the main cause of soil degradation and is accelerated by human intervention in watersheds, causing losses to the agricultural sector and damaging the environment. To estimate the impacts caused by land use or climate changes on hydrosedimentological processes, physically-based distributed models have been shown to be quite effective. In this study, the SWAT model was calibrated and validated for two subwatersheds of the Japaratuba Mirim river watershed, one located upstream of the Fazenda Pão de […]

Mathematical models have great potential to support land use planning, with the goal of improving water and land quality. Before using a model, however, the model must demonstrate that it can correctly simulate the hydrological and erosive processes of a given site. The SWAT model (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) was developed in the United States to evaluate the effects of conservation agriculture on hydrological processes and water quality at the watershed scale. This model was initially proposed for use […]

Hydro-sedimentologic models are useful in the environmental analysis of unmonitored watersheds. However, the models must be calibrated and validated for accurate predictions. The objective of this study was to calibrate MUSLE for the conditions of the Piripipau river basin (Brazil), using hydrologic and sedimentologic data from 1999 to 2005, and to validate the calibrated model with another data set (1998, 2006-2009). MUSLE’s a coefficient was calibrated fitting observed and calculated sediment yield values of individual events, using observed hydrologic data […]

Methods of spatial representation to calculate the topographic factor (LS) of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) have been used to estimate soil erosion and sediment yield of watersheds. These procedures are based on equations traditionally used to determine the LS factor and information that characterize the hillslope forms and processes, derived from the Digital Elevation Model (DEM). Two computational methods commonly used to calculate LS factor in soil erosion and sediment yield models were analyzed in this study. […]

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of the rainfall variability on the runoff and sediment amount in the Pipiripau river basin (A = 235 km2), in the Distrito Federal, Brazil. To represent the climatic variability of the historic precipitation series, 5 years were selected: the moistest, the driest, an average, and 2 years representing the standard deviations from the series (half-wet and half-dry). After the calibration of the model with basin rainfall and runoff data, each rainfall event was simulated […]