Erosion and Sediment Yield Modeling with USLE, Arc GIS and SWAT

NAGESH MADHUKAR KUKADE

doi:10.37591/.v11i1.812

Abstract

The economy of most of the people in India is mainly based on rain fed agriculture. Theagriculture yield primarily depends on the availability of good productive soil and sufficientquantity of availability of water. In the past, in many areas both were available but recently itis observed that due to various abnormal natural processes and excessive human interferencein the natural processes, the soil layer with nutrient from fertile land is getting eroded, whichresulted into reduced fertility and reduced crop yield. The soil loss from the catchment directlyand indirectly affects the living standard resulting into various social problems. In order to takethe preventive and curative measures against this soil erosion, it is necessary to estimate thequantity of the soil eroded and the major causes for the erosion. The soil erosion for the studyarea is estimated with a good degree of accuracy by integrating Geographical InformationSystem technique and Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) with supportive Soil and WaterAssessment Tool. In USLE model the soil loss is estimated using the parameters like rainfallerosivity (R), soil erodibility (K), slope length-steepness (LS), cover management (C) andconservation practice factor (P). The average annual soil loss estimated for the study area byQSWAT technique is 72.42 ton ha-1 year-1and using arc GIS soil loss estimated is 67.87 ton ha-1 year-1. The spatial distribution of USLE parameter indicates mild and moderate risk due to soil erosion in the study area.Keywords: USLE, arc GIS 10.2.2, QSWAT, Erosion, Thematic