Author(s): Gheorghe Purnavel; Gabriel Petrovici
Linked Author(s):
Keywords: Soil erosion; Reservoirs; Sedimentation
Abstract: The problem of soil erosion, sedimentation and water quality degradation of dam storage is alarming in the whole world, not only in our local area. It requires the development of a new global strategy, starting with the study of watershed processes and finishing with the approach to the issue of reclamation, exploitation and conservation of agricultural lands, rivers and reservoirs. A relatively recent analyse, by M. Motoc (1984), comes out that on Romanian lands the total erosion is of 126.0 million ton/year and from these 44.6 million t·yr -1 are sediment load (0.35 delivery ratio). 84.5% (106.8 millions t·y -1) are from agricultural area and 15.5% from forestry area and river banks. About 49.0% -61.8 million t·y -1 are from sheet erosion and about 23.6% -29.8 millions t·yr -1 from gully erosion. Sheet erosion and gully erosion have different weights (49.0–23.6%) in total erosion. Their delivery ratio on these category are also different (0.26% for sheet erosion and 0.46% for gully erosion), but their contribution to sediment load are very near–16.1 millions t·y -1 (36.2%) for sheet erosion and 13.8 millions t·yr -1 for gully erosion. Autonomous Administration Romanian' s Water considers that on the whole Romania, during last 15 years, about 200,000 millions m 3 sediments (13.4 millions m 3 ·y -1 that means 27% from annual average sediment load) deposited in reservoirs on inner rivers. In the studied reservoirs, these processes are due to the deposition of sediments from the main water supply of the reservoir and of those that are due from erosion from hill slopes and watersheds located in the vicinity of the reservoir.
Year: 2004