Abstract
With increased regulatory focus on eroded sediment and its bound pollutants, methods are needed to predict areas with high erosive potential (EP) in urbanized areas. Using EP to prioritize urban areas for maintenance, implementation of Stormwater Control Measures (SCMs), stream restoration or monitoring is crucial. This study utilizes commonly available geospatial layers in conjunction with a computational procedure for prioritizing the contribution of site specific- and transport-erosion to compute relative EP risk throughout a target urban watershed.  Factors that contribute to erosion were evaluated: local cell slope, soil erodibility, land cover, runoff volume, distance and slope to nearest stormwater conveyance point along a surface flow travel path. A case study of the developed methodology was performed on a 1.6 square kilometer urban watershed in Blacksburg, VA, to generate EP risk maps. Results of the study indicate areas of erosive potential within the target watershed and provide a methodology for creating erosion potential risk maps for use by MS4 planners, engineers and other individuals that manage erosion control programs.
Highlights
Changes in biodiversity, hydrology and biochemistry of steams, referred collectively as the ‘urban stream syndrome,’ represent the negative consequences imparted by urbanization(Walsh et al, 2005)
Erosion potential is calculated for each cell in the watershed based on Equation 2
This study proposes geospatial model for estimating erosive potential in urban areas using commonly available geospatial layers and Python scripting
Summary
Hydrology and biochemistry of steams, referred collectively as the ‘urban stream syndrome,’ represent the negative consequences imparted by urbanization(Walsh et al, 2005). Studies show that soil erosion is more sensitive to changes in rainfall intensity versus changes strictly based on total rainfall volume, due to a larger transfer of energy over a shorter period of time (Nearing, 2001; Nearing et al, 2005). Slope steepness is another crucial factor affecting soil erosion, especially for flow (transport) erosion. Dominant downstream migration through a watershed is via rills; erosion on surfaces between rills is considered interrill erosion (Foster et al, 1977) These two components of erosion are driven by different detachment and transport processes. Rill erosion is dominated by concentrated flow, and interrill erosion is dominated by rainfall (raindrop impact and flow from rainfall) (G. Zhang, Liu, Liu, He, & Nearing, 2003)
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