Vol. 12, Issue 8 (2023)

Author(s):
Sushma Tamta, Akhilesh Kumar and Jitendra Chandra Chandola

Abstract:
Soil erosion is a critical environmental problem of world wide. In this regards, vegetation plays a significant role to reduce soil erosion. Plants having fibrous root systems are more efficient to reduce soil erosion as compared to tap root system. An experiment was conducted at GBPUA&T Pantnagar to identify the effect of lemon grass roots and shoots to reduce soil erosion under concentrated flow conditions. An experiments were performed in a hydraulic tilting flume and controlled water circulation system. An experiments were carried out using three treatments 1. Control 2. Whole plant plot and 3. Roots plot at 1% slope with 6.6 l/s/m, 9.0 l/s/m, 10.7 l/s/m and 12.4 l/s/m runoff rate. Results summarized that Lemon grass plot significantly reduced soil erosion as compared to the control plot. Further, it was also observed that the sediment outflow generation significantly decreased with the growth stage. The sediment outflow reduction from whole plant plot increased from 48.17% to 62.01% on 90 DAP, 67.30% to 73.27% on 120 DAP; and 77.39% to 82.48% on 150 DAP for selected rates of overland flow. Roots were more effective in controlling sediment rates compared to shoots.