Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
- Khosro Shahbazi 1
- ali salajagheh 2
- mohammad jafari 2
- hassan ahmadi 2
- ali akbar nazari samani 3
- mohammad khosro shahi 4
1 Assistant Professor, Forests and Rangelands Research Institute of Iran, ARREO
2 Professor, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran
3 Associate Professor, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran
4 Associate Professor, Forests and Rangelands Research Institute of Iran, AREEO.
Abstract
Negative impacts of gully erosion in marl areas are severe due to improper landuse practices such as irrigation, tillage, overgrazing and degradation of vegetation cover. The objective of this research was to evaluate hydraulic flow thresholds of gully erosion in the agriculture (AG), fair rangeland (FR) and poor rangeland (PR) areas in the Qasre-shirin, Kermanshah, Iran. Nine flumes were performed in the field to determine the critical values of hydraulic parameters including flow discharge, velocity, Froude and Reynolds numbers, Darsi resistance coefficient, shear tension, head-cut dimensions as well as vegetation cover. Results showed that respective critical value of discharge as the gulling thresholds for AG,FR and PR was 1.53, 12.0 and 4.49 li/s indicating significantly higher (p<0.05%) in the FR due to higher vegetation cover. In addition, there were no significant differences for flow disturbance based on Froude number, while the respective value of Rinuldze number in the AG, FR and WR were obtained 3113, 26092 and 9525 significantly higher in the FR. Furthermore, the critical level of shear tension for gully formation in the AG, FR and WR were found 12.12, 14.01 and 9.28 Nm-2, respectively showing significant differences among them. Finally, it is concluded that hydraulic flow parameters as the gully triggering are strongly affected by vegetation cover through landue practices so that higher plant cover in the FR was the key factor resulting in significant enhancement of gully.
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