Investigating effects of land use change scenarios on soil erosion using CLUE-s and RUSLE models

• DOI: 10.1007/s13762-017-1288-0
• Publication Date: 2017-02-28T11:40:03Z
• Authors: M. Zare; A. A. Nazari Samani; M. Mohammady; H. Salmani; J. Bazrafshan
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 15. Life on land; 01 natural sciences; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

Predicting soil erosion change is an important strategy in watershed management. The objective of this research was to evaluate land use change effects on soil erosion in the north of Iran using five land use scenarios. Three land use maps were created for a period of 25 years (1986–2010) to investigate land use transition and to simulate land use for the year 2030. Additionally, the RUSLE model was used to estimate erosion and the effect of land use change. The results showed that CLUE-s is suitable for modeling future land use transition using ROC curve. The median soil loss in the basis period was 104.52 t ha−1 years−1. Results indicate that the range of soil loss change is 2–32% in simulated period and soil loss value was higher than basis period in all scenarios. Thirty percent decrease in demand scenario has the lowest soil loss in simulated period, and the soil loss value under this scenario will be only 2% more than the basis period. Thus, the soil conversion effects resulted from the demand of each land use.