Saturday, April 14, 2012

Revised Universal Soils Loss Equation

I'm back! I know it's infrequent but eh...I have some time so thought I'd try and post a little more.

Today's post is going to feature a model of soil erosion that I have gotten all too familiar with during my independent undergrad research (still need to write a post about that). A very quick background/introduction to my research to provide backing for this model is I am looking at soil erosion in three different sub-watersheds of the Rappahannock River. One way of measuring the soil erosion taking place or at least estimating this soil erosion is through modeling. The Revised Universal Soils Loss Equation is just one model to do this and the equation is as follows:

A=RKLSCP

Where A is equal to the total soil loss annually, R is a rainfall index factor, K is the soil erodibility factor, LS is slope length/gradient factor, C is a land use cover factor, and P is support practice factor.

Shows E=RKLSCP instead of A=RKLSCP but concept is the same.

The way the model works is you can model various plots of land to idealistic conditions where you can change the C and P factors. You can change these factors as they are human dependent. C is land use so you can vary different crops on land or even plant trees or clear land. P is support practices such as no till agriculture and other new age farming techniques. The other factors you cannot change and are dependent on climatic zones and regional topology.