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| Titel |
Assessing the effects of land-use changes on annual average gross erosion |
| VerfasserIn |
Armando Brath, Attilio Castellarin, Alberto Montanari |
| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| ISSN |
1027-5606
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| Digitales Dokument |
URL |
| Erschienen |
In: Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ; 6, no. 2 ; Nr. 6, no. 2, S.255-265 |
| Datensatznummer |
250003458
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 copernicus.org/hess-6-255-2002.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| The effects of land-use
changes on potential annual gross erosion in the uplands of the Emilia-Romagna
administrative region, a broad geographical area of some 22 000 km2
in northern-central Italy, have been analysed by application of the Universal
Soil Loss Equation (USLE). The presence of an extended mountain chain,
particularly subject to soil erosion, makes the estimation of annual gross
erosion relevant in defining regional soil-conservation strategies. The USLE,
derived empirically for plots, is usually applied at the basin scale. In the
present study, the method is implemented in a distributed framework for the
hilly and mountainous portion of Emilia-Romagna through a discretisation of the
region into elementary square cells. The annual gross erosion is evaluated by
combining morphological, pedological and climatic information. The stream
network and the tributary area drained by each elementary cell, which are needed
for the local application of the USLE, are derived automatically from a Digital
Elevation Model (DEM) of grid size 250 x 250 m. The rainfall erosivity factor
is evaluated from local estimates of rainfall of six-hour storm duration and
two-year return period. The soil erodibility and slope length-steepness factors
are derived from digital maps of land use, pedology and geomorphology.
Furthermore, historical land-use maps of the district of Bologna (a large
portion — 3720 km2 — of the area under study), allow the effect
of actual land use changes on the soil erosion process to be assessed. The
analysis shows the influence of land-use changes on annual gross erosion as well
as the increasing vulnerability of upland areas to soil erosion processes during
recent decades.
Keywords: USLE, gross erosion, distributed modelling, land use changes,
northern-central Italy |
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