Deeporbeel wetland is a permanent, fresh water lake, in a former channel of the River Brahmaputra, to its South, in the Indian state of Assam. It is a large natural wetland having great biological and environmental importance and is the only Ramsar site in the state. One of the major threats faced by the wetland is erosion in the catchment and subsequent silt deposition. In this paper an attempt has been made for estimation of the annual soil loss from the wetland catchment due to interrill and rill erosion during the year 2005 and compared with that of the base year (1972). An attempt has also been made to identify the main causes responsible for the changes in the annual soil loss rate. The net sediment deposition into the wetland has also been computed, which is only about 32% of the soil loss due to interrill and rill erosion from the catchment. The temporal changes in the annual soil loss rate can be attributed mainly to the change in land use and variation in average annual rainfall, thus variation in the value of Rainfall Erosivity Index (R).
Catchment area, Erosion, Land use, Satellite images, Sediment load, Soil loss, Water spread area, Wetland
