Soil Wind Erodibility Zonation of the Urmia Lake Eastern shores

The wind erosion occurs when wind speed exceeds the soil erosion threshold and plants or their residues,surface roughness, or other obstacles do not protect the soil surface. Also wind erodibility is oneof the most important determining parameters of wind erosion under certain climatic conditions. The main objective of this research was mapping of soil erodibility through empirical relationship between satellite imagery and physicochemical properties and estimation of soil erosion using a comprehensive assessment model, on the east shore of the Urmia Lake. For this research work soil sampling carried out in 153 points of three elevation classes(1271-1273, 1273-1275 and 1275-1278meters)and4supervised classification methods such as, support vector machine(SVM), Maximum likehood classification (MLC), Minimum distance and Artificial neural network(ANN)were used in classifying and mapping of soil erodibility. Soil samples physicochemical properties measured and 26 samples of them randomly were selected for wind erodibility measurement in wind tunnel laboratory. Wind tunnel experiments at a distance of 20 cm from the tunnel floor, revealed wind erodibility of 2.92 grm-2.min-1/ms-1. Also stepwise regression (SPSSv.25) results showed that among the physicochemical properties of soils, erodible fraction were the most important soil properties, which used in estimating erodibility and have a positive correlation with soil erodibility. The mean weight of aggregate diameter had negative correlation with soil erodibility and no relationship was found between soil chemical properties and erodibility. Of the4supervised classification methods, the artificial neural network has a higher capability in classifying and mapping erodibility and finally the results showed that the overall classification accuracy is57.1%.