Abstract:
This study was aimed at determining an appropriate method of estimating total sediment load of rivers in the north of Thailand. Hydraulic concept enhancing Laursen (1958) sediment transport formula and hydrologic concept based on a simple relation between sediment discharge and water discharge were conjunctively used to describe total sediment load of natural streams. Available field observation data of stream bed material and sediment discharges of the Ping, Wang, Yom, and Nan rivers previously collected by the Royal Irrigation Department (RID), Paitoon (2537) and Bidorn et al. (2015) were used in this investigation. In addition, thirty-fifth sets of bed material sediment were collected from 17 river sections of the Ping, Wang, Yom and Nan rivers during the field survey conducted on 25-29 December 2015. Analysis of the presently collected river bed material has shown that the Ping and Wang rivers were mainly very coarse sand size and the Yom river had wide range of bed material size from fine sand to coarse sand. The Nan bed material was mainly medium sand size. A comparative study of suspended and total suspended sediment loads estimated by methods of 1) sediment-water discharge rating curve, 2) Laursen method, 3) modified Laursen curve with Nan river data, 4) Maddens modification of Laursen method, and 5) combined hydraulic and hydrologic concepts, indicated that the combined hydraulic and hydrologic concepts yielded the best results. The sequel of this method showed that the total suspended load approximately consisted 40% of suspended bed-material load and 60% of non-bed material load. Furthermore, bed load estimated by Laursen method indicated a ratio of bed load to total suspended load ranged from 0%-60%