Search results for "erosion"
showing 10 items of 637 documents
Uncertainty assessment of sewer sediment erosion modelling
2008
Urban stormwater quality modelling has become a fundamental issue in the evaluation of the receiving water bodies' quality state. Laboratory study as well as field campaigns have widely demonstrated that combined sewer sediments present cohesive-like properties which increase their resistance to erosion. However, only few models take sewer sediments into account considering their rheological properties. In the present paper different sewer sediment erosion models have been tested and their uncertainties have been assessed. The main goal was to discriminate the algorithms with respect to their robustness and the reduction of uncertainty. In order to accomplish such objective the GLUE methodo…
Field investigation of rill and ephemeral gully erosion in the Sparacia experimental area, South Italy
2013
Abstract This paper reports the results of a field investigation aiming at characterizing the morphology and hydraulics of both rills and ephemeral gullies (EGs) monitored at Sparacia experimental area, Sicily, Italy. The comparison between rill and interrill erosion measurements showed that sediment delivery processes occurred in some erosive events and that the rill erosion rate was dominant in many cases. The measurements were used for testing both the empirical relationships between the channel (rill, EGs and gully) length and its eroded volume and among the morphological variables (length, width, depth and volume) describing the channelized process. Finally, the rill and EGs hydraulic …
Human induced soil erosion and gully system development in the Late Holocene and future perspectives on landscape evolution: The Myjava Hill Land, Sl…
2013
In humid climate zones, like Central Europe, past soil erosion and gullying are strongly connected with agricultural expansion, and extreme soil erosion events often play an important role in land abandonment. This paper provides a case study to demonstrate the interaction between land use, soil erosion, floodplain development, and land use changes in a 0-order catchment in the Babikovce catchment, Myjava Hill Land, situated in western Slovakia. Sedimentological, pedological, geoarchaeological and historical data indicate two main periods of intensive hillslope erosion and gullying since the High Middle Ages. In particular, a few extreme precipitation events (or rapid snowmelts) caused inte…
Sediment delivery processes at basin scale
1995
Abstract Since eroded sediments are produced from different sources distributed throughout a basin, sediment delivery processes at basin scale have to be modelled by a spatially distributed approach. In this paper a new theoretically based relationship is proposed for evaluating the sediment delivery ratio, SDRi, of each morphological unit, i, into which a basin is divided. Then, using the sediment balance equation written for the basin outlet, a relationship between the basin sediment delivery ratio, SDRW and the SDRi is deduced. This relationship is shown to be independent of the soil erosion model used. Finally, a morphological criterion for estimating a coefficient, β, is proposed.
Similarity between morphological characteristics of rills and ephemeral gullies in Sicily, Italy
2009
This paper reports the results of a field investigation aimed to establish morphological similarity between rills and ephemeral gullies. Rill measurements were made on 14 plots having a surface area of 22–352 m2 located on a 14·9% slope and on a plot 6·0 m wide and 22·0 m long having a uniform 22·0% slope. The plots are located on the experimental station for soil erosion measurements, ‘Sparacia’, of the Agricultural Faculty of Palermo University, in Sicily, Italy. All plots are subjected to natural rainfall. The measurements were made immediately following five events between November 2004 and December 2005. The ephemeral gully measurements were made on a cultivated area of about 120 ha, l…
High resolution gully erosion and sedimentation processes, and land use changes since the Bronze Age and future trajectories in the Kazimierz Dolny a…
2012
Abstract This paper presents the results of 40 years of research on the gully system in the Doly Podmularskie catchment (0.35 km² in size), which is situated in the south-western part of the loess-covered Naleczow Plateau in SE-Poland. Topographic, stratigraphic and pedologic investigations, and monitoring of a tributary gully (gully area: 0.7 ha, catchment: 2.5 ha) were combined with historical, archaeological and palaeoecological records. The results reveal a long and complex history in terms of the temporal and spatial extent and the impact of land use on gully erosion, and the long-term feed-back mechanisms between land use changes and natural processes since the end of the Pleistocene.…
Monitoring and predicting sediment yield in a small Sicilian basin
2001
Identifying areas of a basin that are most sensitive to erosion have stimulated the study of within–basin variability of the sediment–delivery processes and the use of spatially distributed models. To verify the reliability of a sediment–delivery distributed model applicable at the morphological unit scale (i.e., the area of clearly defined aspect, length, and steepness), experiments were carried out at mean annual and event scales in a small Sicilian basin. A Geographical Information System is briefly presented into which the measurements carried out at the basin outlet (runoff, sediment yield, etc.) and other point and areal information (soil erodibility, digital terrain model, etc.) were…
Assessing soil erosion in a small Sicilian basin by caesium-137 measurements and a simplified mass balance model
2000
Abstract The caesium-137 technique affords both an alternative to conventional measurement methods and an effective quantitative estimate of soil redistribution at the basin scale. Among the available calibration relationships which link the degree of increase or depletion of the 137Cs activity relative to the baseline 137Cs input and sediment yield, the mass balance approach has received increased application for its physical basis. First, the applicability of the refined simplified point-based mass balance (RSPMB) model of Zhang et al. (1999) at the scale of the morphological unit is proposed herein. The 137Cs spatial distribution measured in a small Sicilian basin and the spatial distrib…
The impact of road and railway embankments on runoff and soil erosion in eastern Spain
2015
Abstract. Road and railway infrastructure increased in the Mediterranean region during the last three decades. This included the building of embankments, which are assumed to be a~large source of sediments and runoff. However, little is known about soil erosion rates, the factors that control them, and the processes that contribute to detachment, transport and deposition of sediments from road and railway embankments. The objective of this study was therefore to assess the impacts of road and railway embankments as a source of sediment and water, and compare them to other land use types (citrus plantations and shrublands) representative of the Cànyoles watershed to evaluate the importance o…
The influence of aspect and vegetation on seasonal changes in erosion under rainfall simulation on a clay soil in Spain
1998
The seasonal and spatial variability of soil erosion under contrasting slope aspects in southeastern Spain was studied by performing and interpreting 84 rainfall simulation experiments conducted at an intensity of 55 mm h−1 during 1 h. The vegetated soils on the north-facing slope and the upper afforested parts had negligible sediment yield, runoff and erosion, while the bare soils on the south-facing slope had very high runoff rates. Runoff sediment concentration decreased over time during simulated rainfall events on the vegetated areas while it increased on the bare ones. Solute release decreased over time on both surface types. Seasonally, runoff sediment concentration was highest in a…