- Title
- Hillslope and point based soil erosion - an evaluation of a landscape evolution model
- Creator
- Hancock, G. R.; Wells, T.; Dever, C.; Braggins, M.
- Relation
- ARC.DP0556941 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP0556941 & DP110101216 http://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/DP110101216
- Relation
- Earth Surface Process and Landforms Vol. 44, Issue 5, p. 1163-1177
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/esp.4566
- Publisher
- John Wiley & Sons
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2019
- Description
- Excessive soil erosion and deposition is recognised as a significant land degradation issue. Quantifying soil erosion and deposition is a non‐trivial task. One of these methods has been the mathematical modelling of soil erosion and deposition patterns and the processes that drive them. Here we examine the capability of a landscape evolution model to predict both soil erosion rate and pattern of erosion and deposition. This numerical model (SIBERIA) uses a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) to represent the landscape and calculates erosion and deposition at each grid point in the DEM. To assess field soil redistribution rates (SRR) and patterns the distribution of the environmental tracer 137Cs has been analysed. Net hill slope SRR predicted by SIBERIA (a soil loss rate of 1.7 to 4.3 t ha‐1 yr‐1) were found to be in good agreement with 137Cs based estimates (2.1 – 3.4 t ha‐1 yr‐1) providing confidence in the predictive ability of the model at the hillslope scale. However some differences in predicted erosion/deposition patterns were noted due to historical changes in landscape form (i.e. the addition of a contour bank) and possible causes discussed, as is the finding that soil erosion rates are an order of magnitude higher than likely soil production rates. The finding that SIBERIA can approximate independently quantified erosion and deposition patterns and rates is encouraging, providing confidence in the employment of DEM based models to quantify hillslope erosion rates and demonstrating the potential to upscale for the prediction of whole catchment erosion and deposition. The findings of this study suggest that LEMs can be a reliable alternative to complex and time consuming methods such as that using environmental tracers for the determination of erosion rates. The model and approach demonstrates a new approach to assessing soil erosion that can be employed elsewhere.
- Subject
- soil erosion; Siberia; 137Cs; landscape evolution model; sediment transport
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1471849
- Identifier
- uon:48734
- Identifier
- ISSN:0197-9337
- Language
- eng
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