Abstract
This study presents a remote sensing-based index for the prediction of soil erosion susceptibility within railway corridors. The empirically derived index, Normalized Difference Railway Erosivity Index (NDReLI), is based on the Landsat-8 SWIR spectral reflectances and takes into account the bare soil and vegetation reflectances especially in semi-arid environments. For the case study of the Botswana Railway Corridor (BRC), the NDReLI results are compared with the RUSLE and the Soil Degradation Index (SDI). The RUSLE model showed that within the BRC, the mean annual soil loss index was at 0.139 ton ha−1 year−1, and only about 1% of the corridor area is susceptible to high (1.423–3.053 ton ha−1 year−1) and very high (3.053–5.854 ton ha−1 year−1) soil loss, while SDI estimated 19.4% of the railway corridor as vulnerable to soil degradation. NDReLI results based on SWIR1 (1.57–1.65 μm) predicted the most vulnerable areas, with a very high erosivity index (0.36–0.95), while SWIR2 (2.11–2.29 μm) predicted the same regions at a high erosivity index (0.13–0.36). From empirical validation using previous soil erosion events within the BRC, the proposed NDReLI performed better than the RUSLE and SDI models in the prediction of the spatial locations and extents of susceptibility to soil erosion within the BRC.
Highlights
The cell-by-cell calculation of the mean annual soil loss rate was derived from the Revised USLE (RUSLE) model integrated with GIS and remote sensing data to predict the areas susceptible to soil erosion along the Botswana railway corridor
This study presents an approach for the detection of soil erosion susceptibility in railway corridors using a new Normalized Difference Railway Erosion Index (NDReLI)
Using ground-truth validations, the results shows that the SWIR1-based NDReLI1 tends to overestimate the degree of susceptibility to erosions as very high, while NDReLI2 results predicts the same sections as being prone to high erosivity events with moderate degrees of susceptibility as mapped using the transverse horizontal profiles
Summary
Soil erosion refers to the physical degradation of topsoil through the detachment and removal by flowing waters resulting from rainfall and runoff or by blowing winds. The process of water- or wind-induced soil erosion occurs naturally and is accelerated by anthropogenic activities such as deforestation, urbanization, agricultural activities and climate change [1,2]. The resulting movement and deposition of the soil and rock particles contributes to overland flow as well as surface runoff, which can affect infrastructural assets and the environment [3]. The factors and mechanisms that influence the process of water- or wind-induced erosion such as ground cover, topographic structure, rainfall intensity and soil type are geographically dynamic and vary in spatiotemporal scales [4,5,6,7]
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