Assessment of Total Suspended Sediment and Bed Sediment Grains in Upstream Areas of Lata Berangin, Terengganu

Abstract

The amount of suspended sediment yield and the size of sediment grains an indicator of hydrological cycle, especially in the river. The sediment transportation process is one of the measurements of water resources management. Equilibrium of the river depends on the flow rate of water and by several factors such as frequency of rainfall, climate changes and land use activities that changes then effected to the river flow. Sedimentation problems occur in reservoirs, rivers, lakes, flood plains and offshore. This study was carried out in the upstream area, Lata Berangin, Hulu Keruak, Besut, Terengganu. This study was implemented to prove the sedimentation problem, especially the formation of total suspended sediment (TSS) and the bed sediment grain size. There are three important parameters were quantified in this study such as the distribution of sediment grain size (phi), TSS (mg/L) and the river discharge values (Q) (m³/s). The technique of analysis of primary data obtained which determine the bed sediment grain size according with the procedure of Gerald and Kenneth and the phi (ϕ) value in this study using the scale Udden-Wentworth that included median, mean, standard deviation, skewness, kurtosis and the Gravimetric Method used to analyze the concentration TSS is the Gravimetric Method. From the result, the highest TSS up to 6.0 mg/L which is categorized under the class I, based on the National Water Quality Standard. Overall, the estimated daily-suspended sediment load values up to 1.1649 tonne/day at Station 2.  Then, from the statistics for the median, mean, standard deviation, skewness and kurtosis showed that the size of sediment falls between phi -0.30φ to phi -1.00 φ which classified as very coarse and the majority of the sediment texture and a very leptokurtic, leptokurtic texture showed sedimentation production is not so high. Overall, the sedimentation problem in Lata Berangin, Hulu Keruak still in stable level. Most of this upstream area still not developed as land use activities around the river basin.