Abstract
Environmental processes are interrupted by the water action like soil erosion, mass movement as well as siltation on the dam in the undulating catchment area. Soil erosion is one of them and degraded the basin potentiality. This paper demonstrates that erosion susceptibility status in the 13 sub-basins of Kansai–Kumari catchment area has been determined depending upon its morphometric, lithology, geomorphic, land use/land cover (LULC), slope and soil characteristics used by integrated micro-watershed prioritization rank which is based on susceptible capacity under geographical information system platform. Risk assessment of soil erosion was measured by hypsometric characteristic (Hi) and denudation rate (tu) to assess the geological stage of landform and risk status for conservative practices. The result shows that SB13, 2 have a high risk (tu > 90 t/km2/year) due to the presence of low priority rank of morphometric, geomorphic, slope, soil and high priority rank of lithological set-up and LULC but reached under the late mature geological stage (Hi > 0.35). SB3, 4, 10 have a low risk (tu < 83 t/km2/year) due to the presence of high priority rank of morphometric, geology, geomorphic, slope and soil types under the mature stage of geological setting (Hi > 0.5). But SB7, 8, 9 have the medium risk (tu < 85 t/km2/year) due to the presence of erosion-prone LULC patterns like cropland and laterite cover but having low final priority rank and old geological stage (Hi < 0.35). Therefore, erosion susceptibility does not depend on morphometric aspects but also depends on other determinant themes at the sub-basin level.
Highlights
Sustainable development of natural resources and watershed management can be better understood through the analysis of drainage basin such as topography, slope, run-off characteristics, soil condition and surface water potential
The relationship between basin prioritization and risk assessment status The present study address that basin prioritization has a positive relationship with soil erosion susceptibility (r = 0.5) through the integrated analysis of morphometric, geological, geomorphic set-up, land use/land cover (LULC), slope and soil characteristics
Basin prioritization is a holistic approach through the integration of determinant themes like morphometric, lithological, geomorphic set-up, LULC, slope and soil types in the study area under the geographical information system (GIS) platform
Summary
Sustainable development of natural resources and watershed management can be better understood through the analysis of drainage basin such as topography, slope, run-off characteristics, soil condition and surface water potential. Soil loss nearly about 5300 million tons in the entire topsoil falls under the active erosion area caused by water and wind action. They have separately estimated about 150 million hectares erosion area, whereas rest of the land degradation area increased up to 25 million hectares caused by ravine and gullies, water logging, shifting cultivation, salinity or alkalinity, etc. Soil erosion is an important problem of the Kangsabati basin especially in Kansai–Kumari catchment site where main six components of the topography, namely morphometric aspects, geological set-up, geomorphic landscape, slope steepness and length, soil class and land use/land cover control the movement of the soil (Mukhopadhyay 1992). Rill and gully action are predominant agents for the soil erosion in escarpment zone of Kansai–Kumari inter-fluvial site due to the presence of steep slope and indiscriminate land use patterns, whereas light texture porous sandy soil helps in generating soil erosion susceptibility or rapid sheet erosion in the upper part of this basin
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