Assignment I

Course Title: Advanced Soil and Water Conservation

Engineering, SWCE6041
Instruction: Follow the instructions given for each specific question.
Attempt all questions. Show your steps and procedures for
workout equations.

Date of handing over: Jan 03, 2022

Date of submission: Jan 10, 2022
Weight of assignment: 40%

Hassen Mohammed (PhD)

 Advanced SWC Course Assignment for MSc students, January 03, 2022.
Name: _____________________________________ID #:_______________________Dep:___________

1. Efforts in soil and water conservation have been made in Ethiopia since the 1980s; however the
general record for the achievement is not satisfactory (10 Points).
i. Why soil and water conservation measures have been implemented in Ethiopia? (5 points),
ii. What are the main reasons ascribed to the poor performance of soil and water conservation
practices so far in the country (5 points)?, and
iii. What adjustment approaches and techniques need to be applied to correct the drawbacks of
soil and water conservation (5 points)?
(Note that answer need to be written elaborately at least into three pages in a logical sequence by
referring lecture note and reviewing literature. Please write references in the text for any citation
and put reference list at the end of your document based on Haramaya University School of
Graduate Study’s reference guideline).

2. A long and narrow shaped watershed has an area of 75 ha. One third of the area is forest, 10 ha is
scrub and 40 ha is cropland. Forestland is established on rocky surfaces, scrub land is existed on
shallow soils with impeded drainage and cropland characterizes soils of fair permeability and depth.
The slope of forestland, scrub and cropland is hilly, rolling and moderate, respectively.

To safely dispose of maximum runoff rate occurred once in 10 years period from the watershed
through artificial waterway please consider to design a trapezoidal open channel flow with critical
depth (yc) = 0.94 m, channel side slope of (Z) =1.5 (for h:v = Z:1) and bed will be lined with stone
pitching with cement mortar by determining the bottom width and channel slope for critical flow
condition (10 points).
3. Design a gradient bund with no trench that carries a maximum critical runoff flow rate on a
coarse textured soil of 150 ha farmland watershed for the following condition (10 points):
Average length of one complete bund = 350 m,
Average slope of the land = 10%,
Use Ramser’s formula to calculate spacing between bunds,
Rainfall intensity for a duration equal to the time of concentration and for the recurrence
interval = 10 years is 15 cm/h, and
Runoff coefficient, C = 35%
(Draw the final design plan without scale. Be aware that the shape of the channel is Triangular and
formulae such as Ac, Bc, Pc, etc. are related with this shape). (In working out equation 2 and 3, you
better refer an example of trapezoidal open channel flow given in your manual and prepare it
exactly as I did in the example of Excel spreadsheet Engineering Template, but with S.I. units. The
example Template is attached as “Example of critical channel flow calculation.xlsx” with this
assignment. Click on Yellow Boxes to see operators and constants to check the formulae are
properly represented. Submit your *.xlsx files containing your answers).
4. Design a bench terrace of vertical interval 3.0 m and riser slope of 1:1 on a 50% steep cropland of
area 4.5 ha by calculating the following (10 points):
a. Width of bench terrace, W d. Volume of earthwork (cut), VE, and
b. Horizontal distance, HD e. Area lost due to bench terracing, Al
c. Total length of bench terrace, Lt

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 Advanced SWC Course Assignment for MSc students, January 03, 2022.
Name: _____________________________________ID #:_______________________Dep:___________