Geospatial assessment of soil erosion vulnerability in the upper uMgeni catchment in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa

Abstract

Soil erosion remains a major environmental threat confronting agriculture in South Africa. The main objective of the study was, therefore, to assess and map soil erosion vulnerability in the upper uMgeni catchment of South Africa. To achieve this objective, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) was used to calculate the normalized weights of six soil erosion controlling factors i.e. slope (27.6%), vegetation cover (21.4%), soil type (15.5%), rainfall (19.1%), land cover (8.6%) and drainage network (7.9%). The results show that approximately 41% of the study area had a high risk of soil erosion. These findings, therefore, indicate that use of geospatial technologies yields spatial informative data required for detailed soil erosion risk assessment and remediation.