Abstract
Under global climate change and pressure from human activities, soil erosion is becoming a major concern in the quest for regional sustainable development in the Kagera basin (KB). However, few studies in this region have comprehensively considered the impact of climate change and human influence on soil erosion, and the associated processes are unclear. Based on the premise of quantifying climate change, human influence, and soil erosion, this study undertook a neighborhood analysis as the theoretical support, for a grey relation analysis which was conducted to realize the qualitative assessment of the influence of climate change and human activities on soil erosion. The results show that 90.32% of the KB saw climate change as having a greater influence on soil erosion than human influence, with the remaining area 9.68% seeing human influence having a greater impact than climate change, mainly as a result of the effect of rangeland and farmland. The average soil erosion rate of the KB shows a very low level (10.54 t ha−1 yr−1), with rangeland and farmland being the main land use/land cover (LULC) types that see soil loss, followed by forest, wetland, and built-up areas. The climate change trends of the KB show the most dramatic changes in the northeast and southwest, gradually decreasing towards the line crossing from the Birunga National Park (Rwanda) to the Keza district (Tanzania). The human influence intensity (HII) shows a high level in the KB (21.93), where it is higher in the west and lower in the east of the basin.
Highlights
This study focuses on defining the human influence intensity through geographic indicators, such as land use/land cover (LULC), population density, and accessibility (Figure 3, Step 7)
The spatial distribution of the soil erosion rates is shown in Figure 4f, where high, very high, and severe soil erosion occurs in the western region of the Kagera Basin (KB), with moderate soil erosion predominate in the central and eastern regions
The analysis of the impact of climate change and human activities on soil erosion is currently mostly concentrated on the impact of independent factors
Summary
Soil erosion has become a major challenge for global sustainable development [1], and the impact of climate change and human influence on it has been well established worldwide [2,3,4,5]. As one of the sources of the Nile River, the Kagera Basin (KB), East Africa, and its ecosystem is related to the livelihoods of the upper reaches of the river, and even the entire Nile River Basin, including regulating hydrological cycles, soil erosion control, and food supply [6]. Under the pressure of global climate change, increasing population pressure, and the rapid development of the social economy, soil erosion in the basin has become an increasingly serious issue [7]
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