Search results for " water erosion"

Predicting plot soil loss by empirical and process-oriented approaches. A review

2018

Soil erosion directly affects the quality of the soil, its agricultural productivity and its biological diversity. Many mathematical models have been developed to estimate plot soil erosion at different temporal scales. At present, empirical soil loss equations and process-oriented models are considered as constituting a complementary suite of models to be chosen to meet the specific user need. In this paper, the Universal Soil Loss Equation and its revised versions are first reviewed. Selected methodologies developed to estimate the factors of the model with the aim to improve the soil loss estimate are described. Then the Water Erosion Prediction Project which represents a process-oriente…

Mass movements (landslides) and environmental features in an area Of Alto Belice Destro (High Right Belice) Western Sicily - Italy

2007

Effects of soil management techniques on soil water erosion in apricot orchards.

2016

Soil erosion is extreme in Mediterranean orchards due to management impact, high rainfall intensities, steep slopes and erodible parent material. Vall d'Albaida is a traditional fruit production area which, due to the Mediterranean climate and marly soils, produces sweet fruits. However, these highly productive soils are left bare under the prevailing land management and marly soils are vulnerable to soil water erosion when left bare. In this paper we study the impact of different agricultural land management strategies on soil properties (bulk density, soil organic matter, soil moisture), soil water erosion and runoff, by means of simulated rainfall experiments and soil analyses. Three rep…

Predicting event soil loss from bare plots at two Italian sites

2013

Abstract Including runoff in USLE-type empirical models is expected to improve plot soil loss prediction at the event temporal scale and literature yields encouraging signs of the possibility to simply estimate runoff at these spatial and temporal scales. The objective of this paper was to develop an estimating procedure of event soil loss from bare plots (length = 11–44 m, slope steepness = 14.9–16.0%) at two Italian sites, i.e. Masse, in Umbria, and Sparacia, in Sicily, having a similar sand content (5–7%) but different silt (33% at Sparacia, 59% at Masse) and clay (62% and 34%, respectively) contents. A test of alternative erosivity indices for the Masse station showed that the best perf…

Rainfall simulation and Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry for the analysis of soil water erosion in Mediterranean vineyards

2016

[EN] Soil water erosion is a serious problem, especially in agricultural lands.Among these, vineyards deserve attention, because they constitute for the Mediterranean areas a type of land use affected by high soil losses. A significant problem related to the study of soil water erosion in these areas consists in the lack of a standardized procedure of collecting data and reporting results, mainly due to a variability among the measurement methods applied. Given this issue and the seriousness of soil water erosion in Mediterranean vineyards, this works aims to quantify the soil losses caused by simulated rainstorms, and compare them with each other depending on two different methodologies: (…

Multi-parametric GIS analysis to assess gully erosion susceptibility: a test in southern Sicily, Italy

2011

: A GIS-analysis was carried out in a test basin of southern Sicily, the Magazzolo River basin, in order to assess susceptibility conditions to gully erosion phenomena. The linear density of ephemeral and permanent gullies computed within each class of nine environmental variables was used to generate a gully erosion susceptibility map for the area. A validation procedure carried out in order to test the reliability of the adopted method highlighted a clear correlation between the occurrence of gullies and the computed susceptibility levels

Mulching practices for reducing soil water erosion: A review

2016

Abstract Among the soil conservation practices that are used, mulching has been successfully applied to reduce soil and water losses in different contexts, such as agricultural lands, fire-affected areas, rangelands and anthropic sites. In these contexts, soil erosion by water is a serious problem, especially in semi-arid and semi-humid areas of the world. Although the beneficial effects of mulching are known, further research is needed to quantify them, especially in areas where soil erosion by water represents a severe threat. In the literature, there are still some uncertainties about how to maximize the effectiveness of mulching to reduce the soil and water loss rates. Given the serious…