Abstract

Soil erosion in North Korea has been continued to accelerate by deterioration of topographical conditions. However, few studies have been conducted to predict the amount of soil loss in North Korea due to limited data so far. Rainfall erosivity is an important factor to predict the amount of long-term annual soil loss by USLE (universal soil loss equation). The purpose of this study is to investigate rainfall erosivity, which presented the potential risk of soil erosion by water, in North Korea. Annual rainfall erosivities for 27 stations in North Korea for 1983~2010 were calculated using regression models based on modified Institute of Agricultural Sciences (IAS) index in this study. The result showed that annual average rainfall erosivity in North Korea ranged from 2,249 to 7,526 and averaged value was <TEX>$4,947MJmm\;ha^{-1}\;hr^{-1}\;yr^{-1}$</TEX>, which corresponded to about 70% of annual average rainfall erosivity in South Korea. The finding was that the potential risk of soil erosion in North Korea has been accelerated by the increase of rainfall erosivity since the late 1990s.

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