Evaluation and analysis of the impact of land use on soil erosion using the RUSLE experimental model (case study: Balikhlochai watershed, Ardabil province)

The type and intensity of soil erosion in a region depends on climatic conditions, lowland and elevation of the land, soil and land use, among which the importance of land use is greater than other factors due to the effective role of humans on it. The purpose of this research is to evaluate and analyze the amount of soil erosion in the Balikhlochai watershed using the RUSLE experimental model in Ardabil province. In order to carry out this research, first, the satellite image of the studied area from the year 1400 and the month of June was obtained from the US Geological Survey Center, and after atmospheric and radiometric corrections, a land use map was prepared using the supervised classification method using support vector machine. Then the RUSLE model was used to estimate the erosion rate. SPSS 21, Excel, ArcGIS 5.4, Archydro and ENVI 5.3 software were used to analyze and produce maps in this research. RUSLE model parameter layer including rain erosion layer, soil layer, topography layer, vegetation layer and soil protection factor as well as various statistics related to rain gauge stations, hydrometry, topographic maps 1:50000, geology 1:100000 as well as DEM (20 meters area) and GIS geographic information system and remote sensing have been used. The results of this study showed that the average amount of annual soil erosion for the whole basin ranges from -6.65 to 14.75 tons per hectare per year. Also, the investigation of regression relationships between the factors of RUSLE model and the amount of annual soil erosion showed that the topography factor (LS) with the highest coefficient of determination R^2=0.95 is the most important in the estimation of annual soil erosion using the RUSLE model.