Investigation of Applicability of Soil Map Units to Estimate the Spatial Variability of Soil ‎Erodibility

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

‎ 10.22052/deej.2016.113630

Abstract

Soil erodibility is one of the six components affecting water erosion of the universal soil loss equation (USLE). K-factor ‎is best obtained from direct measurements on natural plots. This is an infeasible task on large scales. To overcome this ‎problem measured K-factor values have been related to soil properties and the soil classification maps are used. The ‎current research examines the ability of the soil maps for calculation of erodibility factor in the watershed scale. This ‎subject was followed by investigation of difference of erodibility components among the soil types of Darabkola ‎Watershed. Also, geostatistical technique with Kriging method are used for representation of the spatial distribution of ‎K-factor. Results showed that among the K-factor components, percent of silt, structure class and permeability had ‎significant difference between some of soil types, and other components and K-factor didn’t have significant ‎difference. In conclusion any coincidence seemed between erodibility map and soil types map.

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