Assessment of spatio-temporal dynamics of soil erosional severity through geoinformatics

Abstract

The present study makes an attempt to determine the effects of the change in the landuse and landcovers during 14 years (1996–2010) on the magnitude of the soil erosional severity on microwatershed basis in an agricultural watershed located around a rapidly urbanizing city Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state, India. The tasks comprise three steps: categorization of the I order microwatersheds into five zones of erosional severity based on the Universal Soil Loss Equation derived soil erosion for the respective years, determination of the temporal change in thenumber and area of the microwatersheds and of the temporal change in thelanduse and landcovers falling in the respective severity zones. The crop management factor (C) was estimated using the Transformed Soil-Adjusted Vegetation Index values derived from the respective years' satellite data. The investigation revealed significant change in the spatio-temporal pattern and magnitude of the erosional severity zones vis-à-vis the change in the landuse and landcovers.

Keywords:

• soil erosion
• erosional severity zones
• USLE