Determining the Dependence of a Landscape’s Ecological Stability and the Intensity of Erosion during 1990–2018

Abstract

Among the main elements that contribute to climate change are degradation processes and the ecological level of a landscape. These two topics have been discussed and researched for many years, and many studies have been conducted. The idea behind this article is to determine the correlation between the ecological stability of a territory and the intensity of degradation processes and find out how ecological stability affects the intensity of soil erosion and vice versa. The ecological stability was calculated based on various methods during the years analyzed, i.e., 1990, 2006, 2012, and 2018. The soil water erosion measurements were performed for the same period in order to identify the relationship between ecological stability and the intensity of soil erosion. The investigated area is located in the Slovak Republic, and each year reflects different types of management of the territory, reflecting the current situation in the catchment according to the year evaluated. The intensity of the erosion process was measured using a physically based EROSION-3D model based on the precipitation levels derived using the Community Land Model (the CLM). In addition to identifying the relationship between the level of ecological stability and the intensity of erosion, this study also describes the development of ecological stability during the evaluated period together with changes in soil erosion processes. The results show a dependence between the intensity of ecological stability and soil erosion. First of all, it determines whether such a dependence exists at all and also its extent.