Potential of Napier Grass in Preventing River Siltation Associated with Water Runoff

• Main Author: Nurul Farhana Md Nordin
• Format: Undergraduate Final Project Report
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://discol.umk.edu.my/id/eprint/6047/

River serves as an important element of water resources and that preventative measures from pollution are required to keep it in sustainable manners. The application of vegetative barrier as a soil conservation approach has been getting much global attention due to its advantages in terms of inexpensive cost as compared to other mechanical measures in soil conservation and that it is less labor intensive. Hence, this study intends on the application of Napier grass served as a vegetative barrier against the effect of water runoff and consequently of sediment loads content by allowing surface water runoff to occur on the slope by keeping the transported material before it reached any water bodies. A runoff plot on a slope of 26% was used with the cultivation of Napier grass at the lower end of the plot. The plot area for Napier grass was made with the area of 6m2. Prior before any sampling events, the runoff plot was slightly disturbed and that a defined border was made for the plot to ensure there was no other runoff entering or leaving the plot. Water samples were taken off from the surface water runoff during raining events for eight consecutive times. Suspended solid analysis was done to measure the amount of sediments loaded in the water samples and the percentage of reduction in the water samples were calculated. By withdrawing the water samples both from the runoff before and after it had passed on the vegetative barrier, the comparison was made between the two data. Hence, the percentage of reduction had achieved and that the highest percentage reduction by Napier grass was 75.5% and the lowest percentage of reduction was 39.4%. The amount of rainfall, plant density of Napier grass was found to have an influence with the effectiveness in sediment trapping capacity