The role of indigenous plant species in controlling the erosion of top soil in sub-tropical environment: In-situ field observation and validation

Abstract

Due to soil erosion, agricultural land productivity has declined in monsoon-dominated region of India. In this perspective, food security is threatened due to large-scale erosion and its associated declining tendency of fertility. So, people are trying to maximize production by considering HYVs (high-yielding varieties) seed, the large amount of fertilizer, and the agricultural system's alteration. For this reason, the intensity and amount of erosion have increased eventually. In the Indian context, most of the research regarding soil erosion has been done with the help of various established empirical and semi-empirical methods. These methods were developed universally and were less accurate in the Indian climatic context. This research establish a new (Indian soil erosion model: ISEM) on soil erosion considering the Indian climatic condition. This model was validated with the measured soil erosion and is much more reliable regarding optimal capacity than other established models. There is currently no such model for soil erosion in the Indian climate. So, our study has validated the innovative technique to soil erosion modelling that we created and presented. We used vegetation indices from several plots, including those with indigenous species land, external species land, and shrub land, to correlate the projected soil erosion using ISEM. The r2 values for the native, outside, and shrub land are, respectively, 0.5112, 0.2827, and 0.3028. From this, we can easily understand the optimal capacity of the model and the suitable measures in the plantation programme.