physically based model

The difficulties in the measurement of rainfall interception in forests confirm the necessity of presenting models. The widely used models for estimating rainfall interception are physical-based models, among which the Sparse Gash is the most commonly used. We evaluated the Sparse Gash model for estimating the rainfall interception of five forest stands (two chestnut-leaved oak stands, two oriental beech stands, and one velvet maple stand) in the Hyrcanian region. In each stand, the gross rainfall and throughfall were measured using 5 and 20 rainfall collectors, respectively, and rainfall interception was calculated by subtracting the throughfall from gross rainfall. To evaluate the performance of the model, we used statistical metrics: Error percentage (Error), Mean Absolute Error (MAE), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), and the Model Efficiency coefficient (CE). Based on the Pearson correlation coefficient, the correlation between the values estimated by the model and the observed values was statistically significant at a 95% confidence interval. In all forests, the values of the CE were higher than 0.5, indicating the appropriate efficiency of the model. Based on the Error, the model showed good capability in estimating the rainfall interception of four forest stands (i.e., oriental beech in Lajim, chestnut-leaved oak in Kohmiyan and Sari, and velvet maple in Sari Error metric were found to be -10.3%, +12.7%, +10.8%, and +15.4%, respectively). Studying the performance of physically-based models in forests with different species and different allometric, climatic and rainfall characteristics completes the information gap about the efficiency of models to estimate rainfall interception.

Soil is one of the most vital natural resources in any country. Nowadays, lands are rarely found worldwide without having severe erosion problem. Landslide is one of the soil erosion processes in which a huge volume of soil is washed away. SHETRAN Model was used in this study to assess the landslides being occurred in Zidasht catchment, Taleghan. At the first stage, sediment-water mixed samples were gathered at the outlet of the Catchment for calibration purpose in 2011. To run the model, regions undergoing landslide were identified using GISLIP sub-model. Secondly, after hydrological and sediment production simulations in a sub-model of SHETRAN for the region, calibration was made for spring season. After the calibration process, the model was run again, this time for the regions having landslide (for 418 spots), and in regions where landslide sediments do not pour into water courses, these regions were omitted, the final amount of sediment was calculated using SHETRAN sub-model and the results were compared with the previous studies. The results show that 19.75% of the total sediment belongs to landslides. With regard to the current sediment quantity of about 111248 kg, total sediment in landslides was estimated to be around 120668kg.