10-Daily soil erosion modelling over sub-Saharan Africa

Abstract

Soil erosion is considered to be one of the greatest environmental problems of sub-Saharan Africa. This paper investigates the advantages and disadvantages of modelling soil erosion at the continental scale and suggests an operational methodology for mapping and quantifying 10-daily water runoff and soil erosion over this scale using remote sensing data in a geographical information system framework. An attempt is made to compare the estimates of this study with general data on the severity of soil erosion over Africa and with measured rates of soil loss at different locations over the continent. The results show that the measured and estimated rates of erosion are in some areas very similar and in general within the same order of magnitude. The importance and the potential of using the soil erosion estimates with simple models and easily accessible free data for various continental-scale environmental applications are also demonstrated.

Soil erosion risk mapping using RUSLE model on jhargram sub-division at West Bengal in India

“…Earlier studies endeavored to guesstimate K factor based on soil types (Symeonakis and Drake, 2010). K values for the textural groups varied from 0.10 t ha h ha -1 MJ -1 mm -1 (gravelly loam), 0.17 t ha h ha -1 MJ -1 mm -1 for gravelly clay, 0.25 t ha h ha -1 MJ -1 mm -1 for clay and 0.36 t ha h ha -1 MJ -1 mm -1 for loam, respectively.…”

Estimating soil erosion in sub-Saharan Africa based on landscape similarity mapping and using the revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE)

“…As a result, there is still a debate whether the problem of land degradation really reached levels, which seriously threaten the land, the economic future of the continent and the livelihoods of its inhabitants (Symeonakis and Drake 2010). This impairs the preparedness and willingness of international organizations, policy and decision makers to invest in measures that can help tackle land degradation.…”

Multi-pronged assessment of land degradation in West Africa to assess the importance of atmospheric fertilization in masking the processes involved

“…Batjes (1996), for instance, applied a simplification of the Universal Soil Loss Equation for assessing water erosion at the global scale on a 0.5°by 0.5°grid and evaluated the output against observed data on severity of soil degradation by water presented on the map of human-induced soil degradation of GLASOD (Oldeman et al, 1990). A recent study by Symeonakis and Drake (2010) also attempted to compare results of soil erosion modeling based on Thornes (1990) against land degradation severity classes of GLASOD (Oldeman et al, 1990). The aim of this study is to assess land degradation with a focus on NDVI-derived methods at the basin scale and compare these areas with those designated as suffering from severe soil erosion based on soil erosion modeling.…”