A Study of Spatial Point Pattern of Piping Erosion, Gully Erosion and Mass Movement Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Piping erosion, gully erosion, and mass movement have complexity that the best way to comprehensively identify them is to use new statistical tools. The purpose of this study is spatial analysis of soil landforms based on spatial statistics and field studies. In this research, a digital elevation model was prepared. Then, the spatial pattern and interaction of the three soil landforms were investigated and the spatial effect of slope degree was analyzed on the spatial distributions of them. The results showed the pair correlation function (g(r)) was clustered for both piping erosion and gully erosion. However, it was dispersed for mass movements up to spatial distance of 140 m. The bivariate statistic (g12(r)) showed there is a significantly positive correlation between gully erosion and piping erosion. The correlation between mass movements with each of gullies and piping erosions were positive at the near distances. In addition, increasing the slope had a large effect on the spatial distribution of mass movements and a small effect on the spatial distribution of piping erosion and gully erosion. Therefore, a comprehensive approach to a landscape using quantitative statistics can lead to better identification of processes affecting them, and then, reduction of natural hazards.