Determining of landuse effects on sediment yield of watershed through sediment fingerprinting technique of suspendedload and bed materials in Taleghani catchment, Khorram Abad

Soil erosion is one of the most destructive phenomena which cause significant ecological changes in many areas. Soil conservation and erosion control is essential because of the irreparable damage caused by soil erosion. Soil conservation programs will not achieve until to find adequate methods of combating land degradation and ways to reduce the sediment. Therefore, we need to have enough knowledge of the sediment sources and identify places to be at high risk to soil erosion. In this study we used fingerprinting technique in the Taleghani catchment, Khorram Abad city, Lorestan Province to determine the contributions of sediment sources including agricultural, rangeland, and forest in sediment yield. In view of this, 39 soil were collected from different sources: agriculture, rangeland, forest and channel bank and 19 sediment samples including 11 samples from bed sediment and 8 samples from suspended runoff, respectively. 11 tracers including C, N, P, Na, K, Cu, Zn, Mg, Mn, Fe and Ca were selected as the primary tracers. The results showed that discriminant function analysis were selected Mg, C, Zn and Ca as the optimum set of tracers that can discriminate 3 sediment sources. Mixing model results showed that the contribution of each sediment source is 53.37, 30.37, and 16.26 percent for agriculture, rangeland, and forest, respectively. These results were consistent with the evaluation results of nitrogen and organic carbon stocks. The results of this study can be used in selecting most appropriate erosion control method the study area and generalized to similar areas.