Document Type : Research Paper
Authors
1 Department of Arid and Mountainous Region Reclamation, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Karaj, Iran
2 Department of Rang and Watershed, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ilam, Ilam, Iran
3 Soil Conservation and Watershed Research Institute, Karaj, Iran
Abstract
Gully erosion is a typically threshold process which is important in land degradation and sediment contribution. Having knowledge on driving conditions and affected lands by gullies are crucial for land degradation management. In this research to prepare the gully erosion map over Iran land mass about scientific references (article, thesis and report) were investigated in order to scrutinizing of spatial data base and gullying map. Location of 2719 gully headcuts under different climate and land use were identified. Environmental attributes including: soil, climate, rainfall and temperature were collected through using of DEM (12.5 and 30 m), and landuse by using of maps, scientific reports, research studies were extracted. The frequency of gullies was investigated in relation to literature investigation. Topographic threshold conditions were determined and the relative frequency of gully area under mentioned environmental factors were analyzed. The results show that the total gully area in Iran is about 1,328,852 ha. The most occurrence of this erosion is in semi-arid climates, with annual rainfall is 250-350 mm, high silt content, low slope (<5%) and under dry farming landuse. The lowest threshold coefficient () in both arid and semi-arid climates is related to ranglands. The coefficient varies from 0.06 to 0.37 in arid climate and from 0.002 to 0.46 in semi-arid climate, which is indicating of mixing process (surface and subsurface) on gully developing. The resistance of sandy soils (due to permeability) and clay soils (due to cohesion) is higher than silty ones The degradation of canopy cover and runoff generating are two main driving forces, which will be more important under climate change in the near future.
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