Geospatial Applications in Modeling Climate Change Impact on Soil Erosion

Abstract

Soil erosion by water is one of the major threats to the society and the economy in different parts of the world affecting agriculture. It is major land degradation process occurring throughout the world that adversely affects ecosystem services, crop production, and water quality and carbon emission to the atmosphere. The hydrological processes associated with soil erosion influence soil nutrients and are intricately associated with crop productivity. Therefore, climate change may have a serious threat in terms of soil productivity due to the loss of significant amount of soil carbon from the agriculture soils. IPCC predicted intense rainfall events resulting erosive rainfall in upcoming decades that will be influencing the severity and extent of soil erosion in future. Climate change study deals with the long-term impact of air temperature and precipitation that may affect vegetation growth and soil hydrological parameters influencing soil erosion processes. Changes in precipitation amount and patterns will influence the soil erosion process by affecting runoff generation and rainfall erosivity in future. Erosion models ranging from empirical (RUSLE) to physical process based (WEPP, SWAT) are primarily used to analyze climate change impact on soil erosion globally. The general circulation models (GCMs) cannot be utilized directly in these models. Therefore, it requires downscaling of climate variables to the local meteorological variables using statistical techniques. Geospatial technologies comprising remote sensing (RS), geographical information system (GIS), and global positioning system (GPS) emerged as most powerful tools in spatial prediction of soil erosion and their impact. Advancement in geospatial technologies provides reliable, precise, and updated information of soil hydrological condition as well as land use/land cover and terrain information that enables to derive model input parameters for soil erosion prediction due to climate change. Climate change may affect planting dates, growing period, harvesting stage, crop yields, and thus, the farm management practice. Several studies predicted increase in risks of soil erosion due to climate change, which can exacerbate soil degradation and desertification.