Application of Digital Elevation Model (DEM) for description of soil microtopography changes in laboratory experiments

Abstract

Abstract In the study we evaluated spatial and quantitative changes in soil surface microtopography to describe water erosion process under simulated rain with use of a non-contact optical 3D scanner. The experiment was conducted in two variants: with and without drainage layer. Two clay soils collected from farmlands from the catchment of lake Zgorzała (Warsaw) were investigated. Six tests of simulated rain were applied, with 55 mm·h−1. The surface roughness and microrelief were determined immediately after every 10 min of rainfall simulation by 3D scanner. The volume of surface and underground runoff as well as soil moisture were measured. The surface points coordinates obtained while scanning were interpolated using natural neighbour method and GIS software to generate Digital Elevation Models (DEM) with a 0.5 mm resolution. Two DEM-derived surface roughness indices: Random Roughness (RR) and Terrain Ruggedness Index (TRI) were used for microrelief description. Calculated values of both roughness factors have decreased with time under the influence of rainfall in all analyzed variants. During the sprinkling the moisture of all samples had been growing rapidly from air-dry state reaching values close to the maximum water capacity (37–48% vol.) in 20–30 min. Simultaneously the intensity of surface runoff was increasing and cumulative runoff value was: 17–35% for variants with drainage and 72–83% for the variants without drainage, relative to cumulative rainfall. The observed soil surface elevation changes were associated with aggregates decomposition, erosion and sedimentation, and above all, with a compaction of the soil, which was considered to be a dominant factor hindering the assessment of the erosion intensity of the of the scanned surface.