Quantitative Determination of Soil Erosion and Prioritization of Micro-Watersheds Using Remote Sensing and GIS

Soil erosion which occurs at spatially varying rate is a widespread threat to sustainable resource management at watershed scale. Thus estimation of soil loss and identification of critical area for implementation of best management practice is central to success of soil conservation programme. The present study focuses application of most widely used Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) to determine soil erosion and prioritization of micro-watersheds of Upper Damodar Valley Catchment (UDVC) of India. Annual average soil loss for the entire basin is 23.17 t/ha/yr; for micro-watersheds. High soil loss is observed in 345 micro-watersheds, medium in 159 micro-watersheds and low soil loss is observed in 201 micro-watersheds. It is found that, out of 705 micro-watersheds of UDVC, 453 micro-watersheds are in agreement with AISLUS suggested priority which is based on observed sediment yield, 116 micro-watersheds under predict and 136 micro-watersheds over predict the priority. Geographic Information System (GIS) is applied to prepare various layers of USLE parameters which interactively estimate soil erosion at micro-watershed level. The main advantage of the GIS methodology is in providing quick information on the estimated value of soil loss for any part of the investigated area.