Impact of Climate Change on Future Soil Erosion in Different Slope, Land Use, and Soil-Type Conditions in a Part of the Narmada River Basin, India

Abstract

Soil erosion is one of the major hazards affected by the climate change, particularly the changed precipitation trend. The present paper has generated future precipitation by downscaling general circulation model (GCM, HADCM3) data of A2 scenario in a part of the Narmada River Basin in Madhya Pradesh, India, to obtain future impact of climate change on soil erosion. Least-square support vector machine (LS-SVM) and statistical downscaling model (SDSM) models were used for downscaling, and the universal soil loss equation (USLE) model was used for estimating soil loss. The results were analyzed with different slope, land use, and soil category. Outcome showed an increase in future precipitation with the resultant increase in soil erosion, with a positive change of 18.09 and 58.9% in years 2050s and 2080s respectively in LS-SVM, while it is decreasing in the year 2020s (−5.47%). Rate of change of soil erosion with SDSM is 15.52 and 105.80% in years 2050s and 2080s respectively, and decrease in the 2020s (−8.51%). The soil erosion rate is more in steep slopes (73.04 t/ha/year current rate) than in less slope (3.01 t/ha/year at current rate) regions. Waste land type of land use (15.15 t/ha/year at current rate), and sandy loam (25.45 t/ha/year at current rate) and sandy clay loam (23.03 t/ha/year at current rate) soil types, give a higher rate of erosion than other land use and soil types.