Assessment of Sediment Transport in the Devolli River

Abstract

Devolli river is one of the biggest rivers of Albania which is characterized by large stream flow but also during the full stream flow it bring a lot of sediments and this paper consists precisely to calculation rough of sediments transport of this river.It is important to recognizethat present conditions in the Devoll valley are not necessarily the original natural conditions.Deforestation has been reported to be a major problem in Albania (e.g. and based on personalcommunication with stakeholders in the Prespa and Skadar regions, cf. The erosion woundsmay be caused by years of cutting down trees for firewood. If so, then hydropowerdevelopment may assist in reducing the present high erosion rates in this country by reducingthe pressure on trees for firewood, although long time is probably needed before stable hillslopes can be established. However, there may also be other reasons for loss of vegetation thathydropower will probably not assist in reducing: Shuka et al. (2008) referred to degradation oforiginal vegetation cover in the Albanian parts of the catchment area of Lake Prespa, and suggested that the main causes were traditional farming of livestock, uncontrolled grazing andfires. Clearly, the variations are very high. Variations are higher after May 1st than before this date; this may be due to the steady high water discharges in the beginning of the year, whichwill give less variation in loads (cf lower panel). It should be noted that a single high concentration will have a major impact on the calculated total load transport, especially if the water discharge is also high at the same time.