The use of caesium‐137 to estimate agricultural erosion on steep slopes in a tropical watershed

The estimation of erosion and sediment delivery rates in tropical mountain watersheds is difficult and most of the methods widely used for estimating soil erosion over large areas have serious limitations. The ¹³⁷Cs approach has potential for quantifying soil erosion because it can provide retrospective estimates of long‐term (since 1963) net sediment redistribution relatively quickly. Despite its great potential, ¹³⁷Cs has not yet been used in an extensive, reconnaissance level survey of erosion in complex tropical mountain environments. The objective of this study was to examine the applicability of the ¹³⁷Cs method to estimate erosion on steep tropical agricultural lands (23 to 80% slopes) in the Nizao watershed, a humid, tropical mountain area of the Dominican Republic. In this study we (i) examine the variation of ¹³⁷Cs in ten reference sites—eight coffee groves and two forested sites—and (ii) estimate erosion from 14 cultivated fields. The soil pool of ¹³⁷Cs ranged from to 150 to 192 mBq cm⁻² on reference sites with minimal erosion. Variability among reference sites was less than expected for such complex mountain terrain. The variability within coffee and forested reference (average CV=28%) sites was similar to the variability found on grassland and forested reference sites in the temperate zone. The estimated annual soil loss from 14 sampled fields ranged from 6 to 61 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ with an overall mean of 26 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹. Overall, the soil erosion estimates found using the ¹³⁷Cs method were much lower than those often assumed for such steep tropical hillsides. These erosion estimates account for soil loss since 1963 only and it seems likely that soil losses may have been much higher in earlier decades immediately after initial forest clearing earlier in the 20th century. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.