Investigating erosion rates within a Japanese cypress plantation using Cs‐137 and Pb‐210ex measurements

Abstract

In Japan, soil erosion represents an important threat to the longer‐term sustainability of Japanese cypress plantations. Although it has been demonstrated that raindrop impact, rather than sheet or rill/gully erosion, is the dominant process in both sediment detachment and sediment transport at the point or hillslope scale in such plantations, the role of overland flow at the catchment scale has received little attention to date. To confirm the dominant erosion process operating in a Japanese cypress plantation catchment, we predicted the sediment transport capacities of both overland flow, expressed as a function of the upslope contributing area and the local slope gradient, and rainsplash, expressed as a topographic curvature, for 45 sampling points across the catchment. In addition, we compared the predicted values of sediment transport capacity and rainsplash with the erosion rates estimated using Cs‐137 and Pb‐210ex measurements. The results indicated a close correspondence between the local transport capacity of overland flow and the local erosion rates estimated using the radionuclide measurements. In contrast, there was no significant correlation between the topographic curvature and the erosion rates. Furthermore, the average radionuclide inventories for the catchment were much smaller than the local reference inventories, indicating net loss of eroded soil and radionuclides from the catchment. These results suggest that overland flow makes a significant contribution to surface soil erosion even on forested hillslopes. In addition, the results provide a useful demonstration of the potential for using radionuclide measurements to produce independent information on long‐term erosion rates, which can be used for investigating erosion processes and validating erosion models.