Abstract

Soil erosion is a major factor of land degradation in some states in the central part of Nigeria. This results in the loss of nutrient-rich topsoil causing severe agricultural problems for a society like Nigeria. Thus in this study, evaluation of sediment yield was done. To this end, watershed sediment yield data were evaluated for five different types of soil on the irrigation farm site of the Federal University of Technology, Minna Nigeria. A 22.9m by 2m of land was set up in areas where the various types of soil were identified for three rainy seasons during each rainfall event, runoff and sediment load produced were channelled through a collector placed at the lower end of the plot. The statistical mean value for the data collected during the month of July for the three years was 3.58, the forecast mean was 3.80 and the mean absolute percentage error, 20.82%. The mean average value for that of August for the field and forecasted sediment yield, error and percentage error were determined to be 3.47,3.80, -0.33 and 24.03%, respectively. It was concluded that sediment yield increased in some cases which was attributed to the surface runoff with an increase in slope steepness. Total sediment yield for the undisturbed soil surfaces was generally smaller than that for the disturbed surface conditions. Keywords: Disturbed soil, RUNOFF; soil erosion; sediment yield; surface slope; undisturbed soil.