Impact of slope aspect on hydrological rainfall and on the magnitude of rill erosion in Belgium and northern France

Abstract

The impact of slope aspect on hydrological rainfall and on the magnitude of rill erosion has rarely been studied. The dominant wind direction in Belgium and the northern of France is the southwest, which brings large amounts of rain with it. We investigated whether this leads to greater rates of rill erosion on the southwestern slopes, due to the greater amount of hydrological precipitation on these slopes. The study was executed on six barren conical spoil heaps, which are excellent study objects to bring the slope aspect in relation with rill erosion.Three indicators for rill erosion (volume of rills, drainage density and mean distance of the head cut of the five uppermost rills till the top of the spoil heap) were associated with four explanatory factors (slope gradient, vegetation density, rock fragment cover and slope aspect).The amount of hydrological rainfall is the greatest on the western and southwestern slopes. As a result, the largest volume of rills was measured on the slopes facing the southwest (96%), which indicates that there is a connection between the slope aspect and the magnitude of rill erosion. On the northeastern (32%) and eastern (36%) slopes the volume of rills is lower due to the effect of rain shadow. The other explanatory factors showed little influence on the magnitude of rill erosion, as the spoil heaps were selected to be similar in as many parameters as possible.Beullens, J., Van de Velde, D., Nyssen, J., 2014. Impact of slope aspect on hydrological rainfall and on the magnitude of rill erosion in Belgium and northern France. Catena,

Runoff erosion process on different underlying surfaces from disturbed soils in the Three Gorges Reservoir Area, China

“…Such many man-made activities as urban relocation, agriculture exploitation and road construction in the reservoir area not only largely change the original landform but also produce massive disturbed soil accumulation. These special artificial landforms have been proved to cause large soil and water loss, which is due to its bare soil, lowest vegetation cover, loose structure and heavy rain (Beullens et al, 2014;Gilley et al, 1997). Such severe soil loss not only cause land degradation and ecological destruction but also pose a great threat to the long-term benefit and safe operation of the Three Gorges Project, and so do the security for downstream area.…”

Influence of Slope Aspect on Plant Community Composition and its Implications for Restoration of a Chinese Mountain Range

“…As Van de Water [64] noted, vegetation properties in semi-arid regions depend on both moisture availability and heat load. The abiotic conditions on NW and NF were relatively better than other slope aspects due to low insolation and evaporation [35,45]. Except for pH, changes of soil characteristics with soil depth were similar to others [40,65].…”

“…Slope aspect influences almost all properties of vegetation, such as species composition and distribution, plant performance and photosynthetic efficiency, cover and productivity, species diversity and functional diversity, plant invasion, leaf δ13 C, distribution of C 3 and C 4 plants, and nutrient dynamics [6,33,[36][37][38][39][40][41][42]. It may also affect plant species establishment through sensitivity to temperature and climatic fitness [43][44], and the hydrological precipitation pattern and erosion [6,45]. An understanding of the differences in vegetation and soil characteristics among slope aspects in high-altitude environments is fundamentally important for efficient management of these mountains [46].…”

Waste dump erosional landform stability – a critical issue for mountain mining

“…Artificially created topography may still be prone to erosion processes (Nicolau, 2003). At present, a growing body of literature is demonstrating that reclaimed waste dumps, even with geotechnical stability measures, are vulnerable to erosion (Haigh, 1979(Haigh, , 1980Goodman and Haigh, 1981;Hahn et al, 1985;Riley, 1995;West and Wali, 1999;Kapolka and Dollhopf, 2001;So et al, 2002;Hancock et al, 2003;Hancock et al, 2008;Nyssen and Vermeerch, 2010;Merino-Martín et al, 2012;Beullens et al, 2014;Martín Duque et al, 2015). The most frequent mining reclamation approaches, based on terraced landforms and contour banks, tends towards erosion, especially via rill generation (Morenode las and the formation of gullies, owing to deficiencies in the functioning of berms and terraces during maximum rainfall events (Sawatsky et al, 2000).…”