Use of digital characteristics of soil color for assessing the degree of soil erosion

Abstract

The present study is aimed at developing and improving approaches to assessment of the degree of soil erosion. The transition from verbal to digital form of determining the color of soils expands the possibilities of using this morphological feature. It allows determining the thickness of soil horizons based on the data of laboratory analysis of the color of soil samples. The methodological basis of the study is represented with the index method or the method of field standardization of territories. According to this method, the main contour of the soil is characterized by a full-profile soil pit, and soil changes caused by the relief near the main pit are estimated by changes in the characteristics of soil layers. Measurement of the latter was carried out in the course of the laboratory analysis of soil samples selected by soil drilling. As a result of the study, the soil color coordinates were determined in the CAI Lab system. Their values correspond to the soil samples of the southern chernozem taken at a depth of 1 meter every 10 centimeters. The linear nature of interconnection between the index of organic carbon content in the soil samples and the corresponding values of the lightness index in the CAI Lab color model was confirmed. The soil samples with varying degrees of erosion were identified in a research object: soils of watersheds unaffected by erosion processes; moderately eroded soils of hollows exposed to water erosion; drift soils of the mouth of hollows.