The impact of land use and rainfall patterns on the soil loss of the hillslope

In order to discuss the effect of rainfall patterns and land use types on soil erosion, the experiment is carried out under natural rainfall events on different kinds of runoff plots in Zhangjiachong watershed. Based on the observed data of 44 individual rainfall events including moderate, heavy and storm rainfall, the differences of erosion modulus among hedgerows plots, terrace plots, and slope plots under different rainfall patterns are analyzed. And the effects of hedgerow and terrace patterns on control of soil loss are revealed by RUSLE. Wilcoxon signed rank test is applied to analyze the significant difference of erosion modulus in different plots and the coefficient of variation is used to compare the characteristics of erosion modulus under different rainfall patterns. The results show that the soil erosion modulus of earth banked terrace has the highest value and the lowest soil erosion modulus occurs in the slope land with hedgerows. The coefficients of variation for soil erosion modulus under heavy and storm rainfall are larger than that of moderate rainfall. Hedgerow pattern can effectively control soil erosion under moderate and heavy rainfall while the effect of hedgerow is considerably weakened under storm rainfall. Earth banked terraces own the highest erosion modulus followed by slope land and stone dike terraces.

DEVELOPMENT OF INTELLIGENT MECHATRONIC SYSTEMS FOR ACCURATE GROUND SCANNING OF SLOPE LAND SURFACE

This paper describes the development of intelligent mechatronic systems for accurate ground scanning of slope land surface. Soil erosion causes a reduction in the areas acceptable for agricultural production, loss of soil fertility, creation of negative environmental situations and violation of the soil structure, which, in general, reduces crop yields. Modern digital land use on slope lands deter-mines the use of intelligent approaches and establishes a number of requirements that are necessary and link the technical characteristics of the applied mechatronic sys-tems and the parameters that characterize the agricultural landscape of slope lands. The research goal is to substan-tiate the intellectual method of spiral scanning of the under-lying surface in combination with the methods of digital modeling of slope lands and a number of technologies for accurate land use on slope lands that provide differentiated management impact. A field mechatronic profiler of an orig-inal design was developed for the implementation of intelli-gent technologies for accurate ground scanning of slope land surface. The principle of operation and the sequence of scanning operations using a field laptop and a wireless connection are described. An intelligent selection of the profiling scheme of the daily soil surface along Fermat’s spiral is implemented based on the data obtained along the circle. Preliminary studies of the daily surface of the soil, after its main treatment, allowed determining crumbly con-dition and ridgeness when scanning along the circumfer-ence as well as to establish a point cloud when scanning the entire studied surface along the Fermat’s spiral. At the same time, the soil moisture and the geoposition of the studied elementary site on an agricultural field were meas-ured. The developed intelligent mechatronic systems for accurate ground scanning of slope land surfacemake it possible to increase the accuracy and reliability of measur-ing surface parameters throughout the studied site, natural and climatic parameters of the environment in the field on slope lands by expanding the functionality of the device, taking into account the influence of a set of side physical phenomena and meteorological conditions.

Irrigation Water Potential and Land Suitability Assessment in Kurfa Chele-Girawa Watershed, Wabe Shebelle River Basin, Ethiopia

Assessing available water and land for irrigation are important for planning their use. In the watershed, stream flows from some of the rivers are not known and potential irrigable areas have not been identified. By delineating watershed boundary, irrigation suitability factors such as soil type, slope, land cover/use, and distance from the water supply were classified based on the FAO guideline for land evaluation in to S1, S2, S3 and N suitability classes independently. The irrigation potential suitability analysis of soil, slope, land cover/use and Euclidean distance indicates that 55.1 %, 95.6 %, 88.6% and 93.7% respectively are in the range of highly to marginally suitable. By weighted overlay analysis, total surface irrigation suitability potential of the study area is 54.6%, from this, the potential irrigable land obtained by multi_ criteria analysis has 45.9%. The total available flow above abstraction site is 335.7m3/s or 2.9-million-meter cube (MMC) annually.