Abstract
Rainfall erosivity is a key factor to predict soil erosion rate in universal soil loss equation (USLE) and revised USLE (RUSLE). Understanding rainfall erosivity characteristics, especially its spatial distribution and temporal trends, is essential for soil erosion risk assessment and soil conservation planning. In this study, the spatial-temporal variation of rainfall erosivity in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area (TGRA) of China during 1960–2010, at annual and seasonal scales, was explored based on daily rainfall data from 40 stations (26 meteorological stations and 14 hydrologic stations). The Mann–Kendall test and Co–kriging interpolation method were applied to detect the temporal trends and spatial patterns. The results showed that TGRA’s annual rainfall erosivity increased from west, south, and east to the north-central, ranging from 3647.0 to 10884.8 MJ·mm·ha−1·h−1 with an average value of 6108.1 MJ·mm·ha−1·h−1. The spatial distribution of summer and autumn rainfall erosivity was similar to the pattern of annual rainfall erosivity. Summer is the most erosive season among four seasons, accounting for 53% of the total annual rainfall erosivity, and winter is the least erosive season. July is the most erosive month with an average of 1327.3 MJ·mm·ha−1·h−1, and January is the least erosive month. Mean rainfall erosivity was 5969.2 MJ·mm·ha−1·h−1 during 1960–2010, with the lowest value of 3361.0 MJ·mm·ha−1·h−1 in 1966 and highest value of 8896.0 MJ·mm·ha−1·h−1 in 1982. Mann–Kendall test showed that the annual rainfall erosivity did not change significantly across TGRA. Seasonal rainfall erosivity showed a significant decrease in autumn and insignificant decrease in summer and winter. Monthly rainfall erosivity in TGRA showed insignificant increases from Jun to Jul and then underwent decreases from Aug to Nov. and from Dec to Feb and it rose again in Feb reaching a 0.01 level significance. The daily rainfall data of supplemental stations is very useful to interpolate rainfall erosivity map, which could help to find the credible maximum and minimum value of TGRA. In total, the findings could provide useful information both for soil erosion prediction, land management practices, and sediment control project of TGRA.
Highlights
Soil erosion is recognized as a serious eco-environmental problem of world-wide [1]
Zhang and Fu [15] compared five simple models for estimating R factor based on average annual rainfall, average monthly rainfall, and daily rainfall data, respectively and proposed a new daily rainfall model to estimate R factor which was subsequently widely used in China. e daily rainfall model was expressed as j
It is noted that the spatial distribution of 51-year annual R factor showed a strong variability (Figure 2(a))
Summary
Soil erosion is recognized as a serious eco-environmental problem of world-wide [1]. EI30 is difficult to determine and the basic data involved are not readily available in many parts of the world as it relies much more on longterm rainfall data of high temporal resolution [3, 6, 10]. Some simple algorithms were developed to calculate R-factor relying on daily rainfall [11,12,13] or monthly rainfall [14], among which, half-month [15] and month models [13, 14] were the most widely used ones
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