A ruled-based approach to evaluate soil loss at catchments level in Miyun hilly region

Abstract

Miyun Reservoir is located in the northeast of Beijing and it is the most important drinking water resource of the city. Soil and water loss in this area directly affects local eco-environment and people's life. The soil and water conservation project has been launched out to combat the degrading environment in the upper reach of Miyun Reservoir basin. A ruled-based approach based on the objective of catchments, which is the unit of most soil conservation project, was applied to evaluate soil loss. For each heterogeneous hilly valley in the study area, a set of knowledge-based rules was formulated with remotely sensed images, land use map, DEM and ground investigated data. The relevant parameters, such as slope, vegetation fraction, ravine density, and rainfall distribution, which are also the input parameters of the widely applied universal soil loss equation (USLE), were scaling to the object properties to count this ruled-based model. Finally, all catchments were grouped into four grades according to the soil loss intensity, namely very severe, severe, moderate and slight, the result of the study was practicable to support to make the soil conservation planning