scholarly journals Mapping Soil Degradation on Arable Land with Aerial Photography and Erosion Models, Case Study from Danube Lowland, Slovakia

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 4047
Author(s):  
Marián Jenčo ◽  
Emil Fulajtár ◽  
Hana Bobáľová ◽  
Igor Matečný ◽  
Martin Saksa ◽  
...  

The presented study uses the recent colour aerial photographs, historical black and white aerial photographs, and detailed digital elevation model to assess the spatial distribution and long-term temporal dynamics of soil loss in agriculturally intensively exploited loess hilly land with a subcontinental temperate climate. The strongly eroded soils appear in the studied area as bright patterns, surrounded by darker soils, and they are well visible on aerial photos. Three approaches of interpretation of aerial photographs were tested: visual interpretation, pixel-based image classification, and object-based image classification. All three methods provided detailed maps of soil redistribution patterns. The bright areas as the areas of soil degradation characterized by erosion increased from 1949 until 2011 by 76%. A detailed map of areal erosion patterns was used for the validation of water erosion models. LS-factor of USLE and ED’ index of USPED were selected for expressing the relation of real erosion to the terrain. The relationship between surface morphology and real erosion is very complex, and the tested water erosion models do not express it sufficiently. Therefore, the first and second-order directional derivative of the surface elevations with respect to the tillage direction has been tested. The absolute value of the first-order directional derivative showed better results and better corresponded with the real erosion pattern than the other morphometric characteristics. The findings suggest that tillage is the dominant erosion factor in the area.

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-47
Author(s):  
Marko Langovic ◽  
Slavoljub Dragicevic ◽  
Ivan Novkovic ◽  
Nenad Zivkovic ◽  
Radislav Tosic ◽  
...  

Riverbank erosion and lateral channel migration are important geomorphological processes which cause various landscape, socio-economic, and environmental consequences. Although those processes are present on the territory of Serbia, there is no available data about the soil loss caused by riverbank erosion for the entire country. In this study, the spatial and temporal dynamics of the riverbank erosion for the largest internal rivers in Serbia (Velika Morava, Zapadna Morava, Juzna Morava, Pek, Mlava, Veliki Timok, Kolubara) was assessed using remote sensing and GIS. The aim of this paper is to determine the total and average soil loss over large-scale periods (1923-2020), comparing data from the available sources (aerial photographs, satellite images, and different scale paper maps). Results indicated that lateral migration caused significant problems through land loss (approximately 2,561 ha), especially arable land, and land use changes in river basins, but also economic loss due to the reduction of agricultural production. Total and average soil loss was calculated for five most representative meanders on all studied rivers, and on the basis of the obtained values, certain regularities about further development and dynamics of riverbank movement are presented. A better understanding of river channel migration in this area will be of a great importance for practical issues such as predicting channel migration rates for river engineering and planning purposes, soil and water management and land use changes, environment protection.


Agronomy ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agata Novara ◽  
Giovanni Stallone ◽  
Artemio Cerdà ◽  
Luciano Gristina

Soil erosion has been considered a threat for semi-arid lands due to the removal of solid materials by water and wind. Although water erosion is currently considered the most important process of soil degradation, a growing interest has been drawn to the impact of soil tillage. Although numerous studies on tillage erosion have been carried out on arable land using a moldboard plow, a chisel, and a tandem disc for different crops, there are no studies on the effect of shallow tillage on soil redistribution in vineyards. The aim of this work was to evaluate the soil tillage erosion rate in a vineyard using a 13C natural abundance tracer. A strip of soil (C3-C soil) was removed, mixed with C4-C tracer, and replaced. After the installation of the strip, tillage (upslope in one inter-row and downslope in the other inter-row) was performed with a cultivator and soil was collected along the slope with an interval of 0.2 m from the C4-C strip. Soil organic carbon and δ13C were measured and the total mass of translocated soil (T) soil was calculated. The net effect of tillage after two consecutive operations (downslope and upslope tillage) was a T of 49.3 ± 4.2 kg m−1. The estimated annual erosion rate due to tillage in the studied vineyard was 9.5 ± 1.2 Mg ha−1year−1. The contribution of the soil tillage erosion rate was compared with that of water erosion in the same vineyard, and we conclude that tillage is a threat to soil degradation.


Author(s):  
Nadiya Lemega

This article presents the results of soil degradation studies of the Kolodnytsia River basin. The basin approach is applied in soil-geographical studies. The conditions for the formation of soils are studied depending on the morphometric characteristics of the river basin and soil-bearing rocks. The analysis of the causes of the spread of degradation processes of various species, which cause soil degradation, is carried out. Particular attention is paid to the anthropogenic factor of soil degradation, which began with the development of the territory by white Croats, that is, more than a thousand years ago. To study the degradation processes in the soils of the basin of the Kolodnytsia River, the following methods were used: comparative-geographic, comparative-profile, analytical, statistical, cartographic, basin, and catena. Field studies were conducted in the after-vegetation period. Soil erosion is the most widespread degradation process in the basin of the Kolodnytsia River, which is characterized by the destruction of the soil cover, the removal, transfer and redeposition of the soil mass. Over the past decades, erosion degradation has accelerated and taken on greater dimensions. Erosion degradation caused a decrease in the thickness of the genetic profile of soils, in weakly eroded varieties by 20 cm, in moderately eroded ones by 44 cm. In cultivated soils, the structural and aggregate state deteriorates. The content of agronomically valuable aggregates in the size of 10-0.25 mm in the humus-eluvial horizon of NOT soil under the forest is 52.6 %, under arable land – 25.3 %. The structural and aggregate composition of soils is characterized as satisfactory, the structural ratio is 1.10. Water erosion not only leads to a change in the morphological characteristics and physical properties of the soil, but also to loss of humus in the soil, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients, a decrease in fertility and the like. To reduce soil degradation, it is necessary to minimize soil loading, improve the humus condition, and conserve moderately eroded soil. Key words: podzolic-soddy soils, degradation processes, water erosion, land conservation.


2021 ◽  
Vol 100 ◽  
pp. 05014
Author(s):  
Andrii Achasov ◽  
Alla Achasova ◽  
Ganna Titenko ◽  
Oleg Seliverstov ◽  
Vladimir Krivtsov

Soil erosion by water is the most important global environmental problem. A modern system for assessing and monitoring soil erosional degradation should be based on the use of remote sensing data. This raises the issue of correct data decoding. The article proposes a method for visual interpretation of eroded soils according to the Sentinel image obtained in the visible range. The authors give some combinations of decoding signs to determine the manifestations of linear and surface water erosion from images. The article shows possible errors in decoding the manifestations of water erosion and gives an example of assessing the erosion of the soil cover based on the results of decoding the Sentinel-2 satellite image. Moderately and heavily eroded soils are reliably distinguished, the area of which, according to the interpretation data, was 2.4% of the area of arable land in the studied territory. In the future, the obtained sample of spectral images of eroded soils can be used to develop an automated method of interpretation based on the principle of "computer vision".


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (9) ◽  
pp. 2111-2126 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Santangelo ◽  
I. Marchesini ◽  
F. Bucci ◽  
M. Cardinali ◽  
F. Fiorucci ◽  
...  

Abstract. Landslide inventory maps (LIMs) show where landslides have occurred in an area, and provide information useful to different types of landslide studies, including susceptibility and hazard modelling and validation, risk assessment, erosion analyses, and to evaluate relationships between landslides and geological settings. Despite recent technological advancements, visual interpretation of aerial photographs (API) remains the most common method to prepare LIMs. In this work, we present a new semi-automatic procedure that makes use of GIS technology for the digitization of landslide data obtained through API. To test the procedure, and to compare it to a consolidated landslide mapping method, we prepared two LIMs starting from the same set of landslide API data, which were digitized (a) manually adopting a consolidated visual transfer method, and (b) adopting our new semi-automatic procedure. Results indicate that the new semi-automatic procedure (a) increases the interpreter's overall efficiency by a factor of 2, (b) reduces significantly the subjectivity introduced by the visual (manual) transfer of the landslide information to the digital database, resulting in more accurate LIMs. With the new procedure, the landslide positional error decreases with increasing landslide size, following a power-law. We expect that our work will help adopt standards for transferring landslide information from the aerial photographs to a digital landslide map, contributing to the production of accurate landslide maps.


Author(s):  
O. P. Yermolaev ◽  
V. N. Golosov ◽  
M. V. Kumani ◽  
L. F. Litvin ◽  
I. I. Rysin ◽  
...  

Abstract. Quantitative assessments of soil loss from cultivated land and sediment redistribution along pathways from cultivated fields to river channels have been undertaken using a range of different methods and techniques, including erosion models, detailed studies of sediment redistribution in representative catchments, monitoring of gully head retreat and evaluation of sediment deposition in ponds and small reservoirs. Most of the sediment eroded from arable land is deposited between the lower portions of the cultivated slopes and the river channels. Less than 15% of the eroded sediment is delivered to the river channels. Sediment redistribution rates in the upper parts of the fluvial system have declined during the last 25 years in both the western and eastern parts of the Russian Plain, because of a major reduction of surface runoff during snowmelt and a reduction of the area of arable land in some parts of the study area.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 11181-11211 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Lu ◽  
J. Liski ◽  
R. Y. Chang ◽  
A. Akujärvi ◽  
X. Wu ◽  
...  

Abstract. Soil organic carbon (SOC) is the largest terrestrial carbon pool and sensitive to land use and cover change; its dynamics is critical for carbon cycling in terrestrial ecosystems and the atmosphere. In this study, we combined a modeling approach and field measurements to examine the temporal dynamics of SOC following afforestation of former arable land at six sites under different climatic conditions in the Loess Plateau during 1980–2010. The results showed that the measured mean SOC increased to levels higher than before afforestation when taking the last measurements (i.e., at age 25 to 30 yr), although it decreased in the first few years at the wetter sites. The accumulation rates of SOC were 1.58 to 6.22% yr–1 in the upper 20 cm and 1.62 to 5.15% yr–1 in the upper 40 cm of soil. The simulations reproduced the basic characteristics of measured SOC dynamics, suggesting that litter input and climatic factors (temperature and precipitation) were the major causes for SOC dynamics and the differences among the sites. They explained 88–96, 48–86 and 57–74% of the variations in annual SOC changes at the soil depths of 0–20, 0–40, and 0–100 cm, respectively. Notably, the simulated SOC decreased during the first few years at all the sites, although the magnitudes of decreases were small at the drier sites. This suggested that the modeling may be advantageous in capturing SOC changes at finer time scale. The discrepancy between the simulation and measurement was a result of uncertainties in model structure, data input, and sampling design. Our findings indicated that afforestation promoted soil carbon sequestration at the study sites, which is favorable for further restoration of the vegetation and environment. Afforestation activities should decrease soil disturbances to reduce carbon release in the early stage. The long-term strategy for carbon fixation capability of the plantations should also consider the climate and site conditions, species adaptability, and successional stage of recovery.


Author(s):  
Myroslav Voloshchuk

Based on generalization of literary sources, normative legal, stock materials and experimental data, the complex situation of soil degradation is highlighted. Different types and intensity of the manifestation of soil degradation, their distribution and characteristics are described. The threatening situation of manifestation of degradation processes in some regions of Ukraine is shown, among which soil erosion occupies the leading place. More than 4.5 million hectares are occupied by medium and strongly ground soils, including 68 thousand hectares completely lost their humus horizon. Particularly large areas of eroded soils are distributed on arable land in the Vinnytsia, Luhansk, Donetsk, Odesa, Chernivtsi and Ternopil regions, where the average annual ground wash is 24.5–27.8 t/ha with a tolerance of 2.5–3.7 t/ha. As a result of erosion processes from the total area of agricultural land, about 500 million tons of fertile soil layer is washed out on average annually, which contains about 24 million tons of humus, 0.96 million tons of nitrogen, 0.68 million tons of phosphorus and 9.4 million tons of potassium equivalent to 320–333 million tons of organic fertilizers, and ecological and economic losses due to erosion exceed 9 billion UAH. Flat soil was associated with linear erosion. The main indicators characterizing the degree of damage to land by linear erosion are the density of ravines, the distance and area between them, the slope, the properties of soils and rocks, the morphometric parameters of the ravines and their catchment areas. According to various estimates, the area of land affected by linear erosion in the country increases by 5–10 thousand ha annually. The effect of the ravines on the complete destruction of the land, deformation of the soil cover is highlighted. Information on various types of soil pollution by poison chemicals, industrial waste is given. According to the prediction of scientists in such a situation, 120–150 years on the planet can destroy the fertile soil layer. Key words: erosion, dehumidification, pollution, waterlogging, acidity, degraded land.


Geografie ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-95
Author(s):  
Zdeněk Lipský

The author considers two main processes showing a negative influence on the quality and use of agricultural soils, namely water erosion and wetting. The paper treats of general advantages of aerial photographs. Practical examples are presented of direct and indirect interpretation of erosion phenomena and soil wetting by means of black-and-white, multispectral and infrared aerial photographs. In the conclusion, the main spheres of the problem of the soil fund protection are dealt with. Most of these problems could be solved by the application of aerial photographs.


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