Development and application of travel time based gridded runoff and sediment yield model

The present study proposes a Geographic Information System-based runoff and sediment yield model. The model derives the study watershed characteristics using the Digital Elevation Model. The model calculates the runoff (using the NRCS curve number method) and sediment yield (using MUSLE) on each cell (pixel) of the DEM and routes these hydrological parameters over the overland flow cells into the drainage channels to the watershed outlet using Time-Area histogram method. The backend and frontend of the model is developed in Python and HTML + JavaScript code, respectively. The model develops the runoff hydrograph and sediment graph at the watershed outlet. The performance of the developed model has been assessed by comparing the model output with the observed runoff and sediment yield measured at the outlet of forest micro-watershed located in Shivalik foot hills of North-West India. The statistical analysis reveals the reasonably well performance of the developed model in simulating runoff and sediment yield as is corroborated by low values of PBIAS, MAPE, MBE and RMSE and high values of correlation coefficient and model efficiency.