Abstract
Abstract. Rainfall erosivity is the power of rainfall to cause soil erosion by water. The rainfall erosivity index for a rainfall event (energy-intensity values – EI30) is calculated from the total kinetic energy and maximum 30 min intensity of individual events. However, these data are often unavailable in many areas of the world. The purpose of this study was to develop models based on commonly available rainfall data resolutions, such as daily or monthly totals, to calculate rainfall erosivity. Eleven stations with 1 min temporal resolution rainfall data collected from 1961 through 2000 in the eastern half of China were used to develop and calibrate 21 models. Seven independent stations, also with 1 min data, were utilized to validate those models, together with 20 previously published equations. The models in this study performed better or similar to models from previous research to estimate rainfall erosivity for these data. Using symmetric mean absolute percentage errors and Nash–Sutcliffe model efficiency coefficients, we can recommend 17 of the new models that had model efficiencies ≥ 0.59. The best prediction capabilities resulted from using the finest resolution rainfall data as inputs at a given erosivity timescale and by summing results from equations for finer erosivity timescales where possible. Results from this study provide a number of options for developing erosivity maps using coarse resolution rainfall data.
Highlights
Soil erosion prediction models are effective tools for helping to guide and inform soil conservation planning and practice
The most widely used soil erosion models used for conservation planning are derived from the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) (Wischmeier and Smith, 1965, 1978)
The Chinese Soil Loss Equation (CSLE) was used in the first national water erosion sample survey in China (Liu et al, 2013). These models have in common a rainfall erosivity factor (R), which reflects the potential capability of rainfall to cause soil loss from hillslopes, and which is one of the most important basic factors for estimating soil erosion
Summary
Soil erosion prediction models are effective tools for helping to guide and inform soil conservation planning and practice. EI30 is defined as the product of kinetic energy of rainfall and the maximum contiguous 30 min rainfall intensity during the rainfall event It is the basic rainfall erosivity index that was developed by Wischmeier (1958) originally for the USLE, and is still widely used in other erosion prediction models (e.g., RUSLE, RUSLE2), with some modifications and improvements. Where er is the estimated unit rainfall kinetic energy (MJ ha−1 mm−1) and ir is the rainfall intensity (mm h−1) at any given time within a rainfall event (usually taken as 1 min for computational purposes, with average-intensity representative of the time increment) This was based largely on work of McGregor and Mutchler (1976) and McGregor et al (1995), who found that the RUSLE equation gave values that were too low.
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