Abstract
ABSTRACTDetailed information pertaining to soil erosion is required to ensure eco-environment protection and economic development for Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and remote sensing and geographical information system technologies are adopted to obtain an accurate distribution of soil erosion. An improved estimation method for wind erosion is developed, which proves to be effective with an overall precision of 87.24%. The proposed model uses six critical factors: number of snow cover days, soil erodibility, aridity index, vegetation fraction, soil crust index, and wind field intensity. Results show that soil wind erosion is widely distributed throughout the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. The average erosion intensity is 0.50, which is determined to be a moderate erosion level. The wind erosion intensity increases from a slight level in the western part to a severe level in the mid-eastern part. The mean intensity of soil wind erosion for varying land use types is ranked in descending magnitude of barren or sparse vegetation, open shrubland, grassland, cropland, evergreen coniferous forest, and mixed forest. There are large differences in soil wind erosion intensities among soil types; grassland has severe wind erosion and Luvic Arenosols has the lowest erosion intensity.
Highlights
Soil wind erosion is an important soil degradation process during late winter–early spring that occurs extensively in semi-arid and arid regions, which has major impacts on regional desertification and agriculture (Tegen et al 2004)
In order to facilitate the analysis of the spatial patterns of soil wind erosion, the wind erosion intensity was divided into five categories with the method of Natural Breaks based on the chart histogram of wind erosion intensity combined with field observation data (Jenks 1967; Xu 2006): slight erosion (WEI < 0.33), mild erosion (0.33 < WEI < 0.44), moderate erosion (0.44 < WEI < 0.53), intensive erosion (0.53 < WEI < 0.63), and severe erosion (WEI > 0.63)
The data of field-observed wind erosion intensities was derived from the First National Census for Soil and Water conservation, which was composed of erosion rate (t/km2 a¡1) and soil loss thickness
Summary
Soil wind erosion is an important soil degradation process during late winter–early spring that occurs extensively in semi-arid and arid regions, which has major impacts on regional desertification and agriculture (Tegen et al 2004). GEOMATICS, NATURAL HAZARDS AND RISK erosion has been exacerbated by rising temperatures and decreased precipitation in arid regions, in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China (Feng et al 2013). Soil wind erosion is one of the most serious eco-environmental problems in this area of northwestern China, which occurs mostly as a result of heavy grazing and dust storms (Li et al 2004; Jiang et al 2014). Severe wind erosion is widely distributed throughout the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, in the mid-eastern region
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