Abstract
This paper evaluates the possible impacts of climate change and land use change and its combined effects on soil loss and net soil loss (erosion and deposition) in the Mae Nam Nan sub-catchment, Thailand. Future climate from two general circulation models (GCMs) and a regional circulation model (RCM) consisting of HadCM3, NCAR CSSM3 and PRECIS RCM ware downscaled using a delta change approach. Cellular Automata/Markov (CA_Markov) model was used to characterize future land use. Soil loss modeling using Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) and sedimentation modeling in Idrisi software were employed to estimate soil loss and net soil loss under direct impact (climate change), indirect impact (land use change) and full range of impact (climate and land use change) to generate results at a 10 year interval between 2020 and 2040. Results indicate that soil erosion and deposition increase or decrease, depending on which climate and land use scenarios are considered. The potential for climate change to increase soil loss rate, soil erosion and deposition in future periods was established, whereas considerable decreases in erosion are projected when land use is increased from baseline periods. The combined climate and land use change analysis revealed that land use planning could be adopted to mitigate soil erosion and deposition in the future, in conjunction with the projected direct impact of climate change.
Highlights
Soil erosion is a major environmental threat to the sustainability and productive capacity of agriculture [1,2]
It can be seen that the mean soil loss determined by the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model (Figure 12a) under climate change projections from a combination of HadCM3, CCSM3 and PRECIS regional circulation model (RCM) with A2, A1b, B2 and B1 emission scenarios for three future time slices are between 37 Mg ha−1 y−1 for
If downscaled climate change projections are considered in isolation, future rates of soil erosion and deposition are generally projected to rise due to increases in precipitation and rainfall erosivity in the future
Summary
Soil erosion is a major environmental threat to the sustainability and productive capacity of agriculture [1,2]. It is considered as one of the major land degradation processes in the Upper Nan watershed, Thailand, which is the main source of environmental deterioration [3]. The contribution of water as an erosion agent can be represented by rainfall erosivity (R-factor) This factor may be the most important and dominant in the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) [14] and the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) [15]. Rainfall erosivity is described as the average annual sum of EI30 determined from rainfall records
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