Estimates of erosion amount and sediment production in the Kangir watershed in Ilam Province using E.P.M model

Soil erosion is one of the serious threats for natural resources of each country and in many regions of the world and Iran, erosion is considered as a natural hazard. Nowadays, existing of precise systems and different mathematical models of erosion can ability to researchers for store basic and up-to-date, so that they can estimate the amount of erosion and sediment production in the watersheds. In present research, the model erosion E.P.M (Erosion Potential Method) is used to estimates of the erosion and sediment production in the Kangir watershed in Ilam Province. In the first step, using topographic maps with scale 1: 50,000, the watershed boundary was determined. It also streams digital maps, geology, land-use, rainfall, land cover, satellite images IRS and ETM in 2014 were used. The study area is located in the northern part of Ilam province in the Iwan city. This area is one of the high rainfall areas of Ilam province and the average annual rainfall in this area is more than 700 mm. The existence of sensitive formation to erosion and mountainous regions and steep slopes have caused the studied area to be prone area to soil erosion. The specific erosion in the watershed was the equivalent of 13.5 tons per hectare along with per year that equal to 961 cubic meters in square kilometer along with per year. The amount of sediment coefficient of the basin was calculated around 0.81. Generally, the obtained results had indicate average erosion amount of watershed that high erosion area are located in the western and southwestern sides respectively but the low erosion are located in central and northwestern sides of study area.