(Erosion Prediction in Ungauged Basins: Integrating Methods and Techniques (Proceedings of Symposium HS01 held during IUGG2003 at Sapporo, July 2003), IAHS Publication No. 279, 2003, pp. 206–215).
High rates of soil loss and high sediment loads in rivers necessitate monitoring and quantification methodologies so that effective land management strategies can be designed. Construction of a sediment budget can be a useful technique to address these issues since it provides a comprehensive accounting of the fluxes and fate of sediment in the drainage basin. Sediment budget studies in large river basins are usually hampered by inadequate data. Constructing a sediment budget using classical field-based techniques is too labour intensive, time-consuming and expensive for poorly gauged, large river basins. Remote sensing has emerged as a useful tool for studying large basins, and can be combined with GIS tools for identifying potential sediment source areas and quantifying their respective contributions. Such analyses, in combination with historic hydrological records and other auxiliary data, can be utilized for constructing a sediment budget. Following this approach, a framework is developed for constructing sediment budgets for large drainage basins that is prototyped on the upper Indus River basin in northern Pakistan
Himalayas, Indus river, Integrating remote sensing and GIS, Large drainage basins, Pakistan, Sediment budget
