WIT Press

Empirical Water Erosion Modelling For Soil And Water Conservation Planning At Catchment-scale

Price

Free (open access)

Volume

46

Pages

10

Published

2001

Size

1,063 kb

Paper DOI

10.2495/ECO010221

Copyright

WIT Press

Author(s)

O. Vigiak & G. Sterk

Abstract

Empirical water erosion modelling for soil and water conservation planning at catchment-scale O. Vigiak & G. Sterk Chair of Erosion and Soil and Water Conservation Group, Wageningen University, Wageningen, the Netherlands Abstract Empirical water erosion models may simplify the erosion processes, but are straightforward, require few input data and can be useful in pinpointing ar- eas exposed to high erosion risk. For soil and water conservation planning, the capacity of the empirical models to locate the erosion patterns correctly may be more useful than the ability to accurately quantify erosion losses. The aim of this study was testing two empirical water erosion models, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) and the Morgan, Morgan and Finney model (MMF), in predicting spatial erosion patterns in a small (310 ha) catchment at Alora, southern Spain. The available data set comprised cli- matic data, a topographic map, a soil map and a land use map. Both models were incorporated i

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