Estimating the Impact of Land Cover Change on Soil Erosion Using Remote Sensing and GIS Data by USLE Model and Scenario Design

Anmin Fu,Tao Sun,Feng Li,Yulin Cai,Habib Ullah Khan

doi:10.1155/2021/6633428

Abstract

Great efforts have been made to curb soil erosion and restore the natural environment to Inner Mongolia in China. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of returning farmland to the forest on soil erosion on a regional scale. Considering that rainfall erosivity also has an important impact on soil erosion, the effect of land use and land cover change (LUCC) on soil erosion was evaluated through scenario construction. Firstly, the universal soil loss equation (USLE) model was used to evaluate the actual soil erosion (2001 and 2010). Secondly, two scenarios (scenario 1 and scenario 2) were constructed by assuming that the land cover and rainfall-runoff erosivity are fixed, respectively, and soil erosion under different scenarios was estimated. Finally, the effect of LUCC on soil erosion was evaluated by comparing the soil erosion under actual situations with the hypothetical scenarios. The results show that both land use/cover change and rainfall-runoff erosivity change have significant effects on soil erosion. The land use and land cover change initiated by the ecological restoration projects have obviously reduced the soil erosion in this area. The results also reveal that the method proposed in this paper is helpful to clarify the influencing factors of soil erosion.

Highlights

Soil erosion is one of the major and most widespread types of soil degradation. e Inner Mongolia autonomous region has one of the most severe soil erosion problems among all of China’s provinces [1,2,3]. e area experiencing soil erosion is about 79 million hectares (66.99% of the region’s total area), with increasingly negative effects on agricultural productivity and on the sustainability of economic development [1, 2, 4]
The model was later modified to a new version known as RUSLE [8, 9], universal soil loss equation (USLE) is still widely used for its simplicity [10,11,12]
Land use maps of the study area dated to 2001 and 2010 were derived from Landsat data, forest land protection, and utilization planning data from the Liangcheng County government. e land use and land cover results were obtained by combining visual interpretation of the standard false-color combination of Landsat data with field survey data from the local government forestry administration

Summary

Introduction

Soil erosion is one of the major and most widespread types of soil degradation. e Inner Mongolia autonomous region has one of the most severe soil erosion problems among all of China’s provinces [1,2,3]. e area experiencing soil erosion is about 79 million hectares (66.99% of the region’s total area), with increasingly negative effects on agricultural productivity and on the sustainability of economic development [1, 2, 4]. A number of models have proven to be effective in estimating soil erosion at different scales in previous studies. E models can be successfully used to estimate soil erosion because they consider climate, topography, soil, and management practices. They cannot assess the impact of a single factor on soil erosion, Scientific Programming such as LUCC (land use and land cover change) or rainfallrunoff erosivity change. For scenario 1 (S1), i.e., when the 2001 rainfall erosivity acts on the underlying surface of 2010, the simulated mean soil erosion modulus is much smaller than the actual soil 112°0′E 112°20′E 112°40′E.

Methods

Results

Conclusion