Geoinformatics for evaluating erosive rainfall hazards in uplands crops: Preliminary Decision making

Abstract

At a preliminary stage of decision making it is timely to work with parsimonious models, i.e. models with few components that explain the process under study with few factors that interrelate substantially (Box IV.24). We advocate using geoinformatic models (after Warren et al. 2000), which are specific by their geometry, data organization, and degree of generalization. In this study, Soft Geoinformatics Modelling (SGM) makes use of geostatistical GIS application to map erosive rainfall hazards for situations where data collection is limited. SGM was tested at a Mediterranean agricultural landscape, where a hydroclimatic erosivity variable was explored via geostatistical ordinary indicator kriging (oIK) approach for characterizing the variability of severe erosion. © 2010 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.