Abstract
ABSTRACTSoil erosion is a global geological hazard which can be mitigated through better future land-use planning. In the current research, a Dempster–Shafer-based evidential belief function (EBF) and frequency ratio (FR) were used to map the soil erosion susceptible areas and their outcomes were compared subsequently. These methods were selected due to their efficiency and popularity in natural hazard studies. Moreover, the application of EBF is poorly examined in this area of research. Nine conditioning factors belonging to the current time, and rainfall intensity for the two time periods of current time and 2100 based on the A2 scenario CSIRO global climate model, were utilized in this research. The main aim was to estimate and compare the soil erosion hazards at Southern Luzon in the Philippines under two time periods, current time and 2100. This region has been highly affected by erosion and has not received much attention in the past. The area under the curve outcomes indicated that the FR model produced 70.6% prediction rate, while EBF showed superior prediction accuracy with a rate of 83.1%. The results also project that soil erosion hazards in the Philippines will increase due to changes in rainfall patterns by 2100.
Highlights
Soil erosion is one of the most important factors degrading fertile agricultural soils around the world (Keesstra et al 2012; Khosrokhani and Pradhan 2014; Rodrigo Comino et al 2016a)
It should be noted that the projected extent of soil erosion is based on the LULC, road and river layers for the current time and these layers may change in the future, this point was not examined in this study as it is impossible to have a high degree of predictability of such layers in the future
This research aimed to use two of the most popular statistical techniques of frequency ratio (FR) and evidential belief function (EBF) to map the current soil erosion susceptible areas in a hazardous catchment in Philippines, and subsequently utilize the most accurate approach to project the future susceptible locations in the study area by including an additional conditioning factor of rainfall belonging to the year 2100
Summary
Soil erosion is one of the most important factors degrading fertile agricultural soils around the world (Keesstra et al 2012; Khosrokhani and Pradhan 2014; Rodrigo Comino et al 2016a). Erosion may lead to the development of a coarsening skeletal soil with impaired moisture (ability of storing water) (Lewis 1981; Nyakatawa et al 2001) and reduce soil fertility, loss of newly planted crops and deposits of silt in low-lying areas resulting in land degradation and environmental problems (Sutherst and Bourne 2009; Shabani et al 2014). The economic impact of soil erosion is costly and leads to regression (Julio-Miranda et al 2012; Galati et al 2015) and it is essential that governments devote attention to minimize the impact of soil erosion (Hu et al 2013; Alam et al 2016).
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