Application of RMMF-Based GIS Model for Soil Erosion Assessment in Andaman Ecosystem

Abstract

Water erosion is one of the major land degradation problems all over the globe, and its accurate quantification in different land use contexts is required in order to propose suitable conservation measures and curtail related hazards. In the Andaman and Nicobar (A&N) Islands, the land use changes due to faster urbanization and deforestation practices have led to accelerated erosion at many points around the inhabited Islands. Moreover, agricultural land uses in the A&N Islands are vulnerable to severe soil erosion, mainly due to cultivation practices along the steep slopes and mono-cropping culture. A study was conducted by establishing runoff plots in areas with different land uses to measure soil and nutrient losses and to estimate soil erosion using a semi-process-based soil erosion model, i.e., Revised Morgan Morgan and Finney (RMMF). The RMMF model was calibrated using primary data from runoff plots for the years 2019–21, validated for the year 2022, and applied in a Geographical Information System (GIS) to estimate soil erosion spatially over the Andaman ecosystem. The RMMF model simulated soil erosion during validation with a coefficient determination (R2) greater than 0.87 as compared to measured soil erosion from the runoff plots. The study revealed that annual N, P, and K losses of 41–81%, 42–95%, and 7–23%, respectively, due to runoff from various land uses. The land use land classification analysis of the Andaman Islands revealed that about 88% of the total geographical area is under the forest and mangrove land uses, which exhibited very slight soil erosion of <5 t/ha. This 88% of forest and mangrove areas requires suitable conservation measures such as afforestation and rehabilitation/restoration of mangroves. Moreover, 6% of cultivated areas need terracing, bunding, intercropping, etc., at the highest priority in order to conserve a sustainable Andaman ecosystem. On average, the annual soil loss from the Andaman Islands is 3.13 t/ha. About 6% of the study area exceeds the soil tolerance limit of 2.5–12.5 t/ha/year, which needs suitable soil and water conservation measures at the lowest priority due to economic implications.

Soil Moisture Mapping in Indian Tropical Island Ecosystem using C-band SAR Data and Neural Network Models

“…The Andaman & Nicobar Islands (A&N) Islands are blessed with a good amount of rainfall for almost 2/3 of the months in a year, where the majority of crop water demand is met from rainfall and therefore major agriculture practices are rainfed (Adamala et al 2023). The remaining 1/3 months of the year are dry months, where water scarcity is felt even for critical irrigation and domestic use.…”

Evaluation of Soil Loss With Different Alternatives of the C and P Factors Using the Rusle in High Andean Basins

“…Subsequently, a modified USLE (MUSLE), which introduces the runoff factor for sediment yield estimation [16], and the latest update of the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) were developed to overcome the limitations of USLE [17]. RUSLE is a more suitable model for soil loss estimation at the watershed level [5,[18][19][20] because of its association with geographic information systems and remote sensing [2,8,9,[21][22][23][24].…”

“…The spatial and temporal distribution of different land uses and land cover classes were determined using the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) from satellite images [34,35]. The methodology adopted was the use of RUSLE and a geospatial tool (GIS) [21,36,37], which allowed the detection and quantification of the erosion rate under different analysis scenarios. The results show that the rate of soil loss is increasing, with the greatest changes occurring in very severe and extremely severe erosion risks (Scenarios (1) and ( 2)).…”