Abstract
Globally erosion has been considered as an environmental and agricultural problem since the first agricultural revolution. In Ethiopia gully erosion has been recorded as a very serious and common socio-economic and environmental problem of several watersheds. Therefore, the objective of this research was to assess the drivers, dynamics and impacts of gully erosion in case of Tabota Koromo and Koromo Danshe watersheds, South-Central Ethiopia. The intended objectives were achieved by triangulating the image analysis with the data obtained from GPS, group discussion, interview, house hold survey, field observation and field measurement. The result of the study indicated that gully erosion was initiated in the steep slope following the 1970s and 1980s land cover change and other anthropogenic factors. In addition, the soil properties and steep slope (gravity) of the land have contributed in exacerbating the problems. Gully erosion caused physical, social and economic impacts in the area. According to the participants on group discussion and interview, the socio-economic impacts of gully erosion were loss of life for a 12 year boy, injuries of five live stocks, and decline of yields throughout the year. Result from field measurement and observation depicted that loss of soil (1,080,782.6m3) and loss of biodiversity are the major physical impacts of gully erosion. Yet there are promising conditions to rehabilitate the gullied area for sustainable ecosystem services in the watersheds. These promising conditions are the availability of high labour forces, access of transportation, civic societies working on natural resource conservation and the green economy development policy of the country. Therefore, concerned government bodies and the local communities at different level need to set plan and work for implementation in a way to use the existing opportunities.
Highlights
Soil erosion is one of the natural processes which have lasted for a long period of time (Parikh and James 2012)
Natural soil erosion will take place at a given place with normal rate, but the equilibrium conditions mainly change due to anthropogenic factors (Vijith and Dodge-Wan 2019)
Watershed based knowledge of gully dynamics are more important for successful gully erosion control at least cost (Pathak et al 2005; Poesen et al 2011)
Summary
Soil erosion is one of the natural processes which have lasted for a long period of time (Parikh and James 2012). Natural soil erosion will take place at a given place with normal rate, but the equilibrium conditions mainly change due to anthropogenic factors (Vijith and Dodge-Wan 2019). Loss of soil is one of the most challenging global environmental problems (Tebebu et al 2010). According to El-Swaify (1994) soil degradation via water erosion accounted for about 55% or 2 billion ha in the world. Soil erosion is very sensitive to both natural and human factors (Pimentel and Burgess 2013). Among different forms of soil erosion, gully erosion is an environmental threat throughout the world. Its effect on soil, land functions and sediments is attracting attention from scientists (Ionita et al 2015)
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