Soil erosion measurement and monitoring
Soil erosion is the most important and widespread process of soil degradation. Erosion contributes to the loss of agriculture lands, increase of concentration of suspended sediments in rivers and lakes (siltation), and forest degradation. The most of erosion processes are predominated by geomorphologic and hydro-climatic factors so they are natural and permanent. An exceptional natural event (intense and concentrated rainfall, mass movement, wildfire) can trigger soil abnormal erosion.
Intensive land use may greatly accelerating erosion. Even when natural soil erosion is not excessive, intensive agriculture can trigger soil degradation. Eroded sediment usually is the richest part of the soil containing most of the organic matter. Logging, quarrying, road and dam construction are also affect sediment production.
Environmental science and agricultural technology today have a wide array of practical applications to withstand the soil erosion. Some preventive measures are the following: contour cultivation, conservational tillage, mulching, strip cropping, terracing, gully control, afforestation.
Soil erosion is studied by a wide variety of methods. The choice of methods depends on geographical conditions and research scale. Zesmill employs various methods for soil erosion mapping and assessment:
- mapping of soil erosion based of multi-spectral and radar satellite imagery
- digital elevation models (DEM) generation with aerial and LIDAR data
- DEM analysis, morphometric calculations, morphometric mapping, runoff lines modeling
- hydrologic measurements
- field assessment of sheet and rill erosion, landform detection, lithologic and sedimentary analysis
- relief and land change detection, creation of erosion dynamic maps
- geomorphologic, soil, vegetation, land use, hydrologic mapping based on remote sensing and field surveys
- soil-landscape mapping, soil-profiling and catena analysis
- erosion intensity and soil loss modeling using USLE, RUSLE, EUROSEM, Spiridonoff algorithms
- erosion potential calculation
- assessment of irrigation channel and reservoir siltation
Zesmill’s cartography and GIS team creates 2D and 3D maps for erosion assessment at different scales from 1:500,000 (country, region) to 1:5,000 (farm, ranch, development area).
Now we consider the possibility of installing several runoff and erosion experimental plots, or renovating existing ones in Mediterranean region and East Asia. There are many up-to-date instruments which can be installed at experimental plots such as new moisturing and rainfall stimulators, soil tensiometers, solid particle traps, HD cameras for the photofixation etc. It can help to measure basic parameters for local soil erodibility models (for instance, R — rainfall-runoff erosivity factor) as well as to understand the land cover response to exceptional events like heavy rainfalls and wildfires.