Abstract
Suspended sediment load estimation is one of the most important and complicated debates on sediment transport and river engineering. Therefore, the variety of methods developed to estimate suspended sediment load in rivers. According to the empirical nature of these methods, the results have low accuracy and vary so widely from one method to another. Recently, with advances in computer science, various algorithms such as tree based methods have been developed. In this study, sediment rating curve method along with new algorithms such as M5 and Genetic Programing (GP) are used for estimating suspended sediment load in rivers. Flow and sediment discharge data at five hydrometric stations, Behbahan and Cham Nezam on Maroon River, Jow Kanak on Allah River and Moshrageh and Shadegan on Jarahi River are used in present study. The efficiency of tree models, in all stations, was greater than sediment rating curve method, and the RMSE performance of M5 method is 7 to 41 percent superior to sediment rating curve method. The results of this study indicate the close proximity of both M5 and GP efficiency, which according to the simple and conceptual structure of M5, this method is proposed to estimate suspended sediment load in river streams.
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