A GIS-based simulation and visualization tool for the assessment of gully erosion processes

ABSTRACT

Gully erosion is known to affect soil productivity, and to limit land use in many parts of the world. To assess the susceptibility of soils to gully erosion, the triggering factors must be analyzed. A simulation of gully development over time was implemented in Python – GIS modules based on the topographic characteristics of the study area, soil properties, and measured runoff. The results show that the developed modules allow a successful data preparation, process simulation and spatial visualization of the obtained results in 2D and 3D as well as an analysis of time series of gully evolution .

KEYWORDS:

• Soil erosion
• Gully simulation model
• Python application
• GIS
• visualisation

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank profoundly Prof. Dr Alexey Sidorchuk for providing the code of the gully models and his fundamental support and cooperation throughout the entire process of implementing the model and writing this paper. Moreover, the authors would like to thank the Department of Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics of Stuttgart University of Applied Sciences, the Department of Geography of University of Tübingen, the ROCEEH project (The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans) of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences as well as the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences of Pavia University for providing relevant data and support in conducting this study.

Disclosure statement

Conflicts of interest the authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Authorship contribution

Adel Omran concept, model developer, analysis, writing, editing; Dietrich Schröder model developer, writing, editing; Christian Sommer Data provider, fieldwork, writing and editing; Volker Hochschild data provider, and editing; Michael Maerker concept, data provider, writing, editing and fieldwork.