Research Article | OPEN ACCESS
Determination of Soil Erodibility Index for Taiwan Mountainous Area
Jih-Jang Huang, Chin-Ping Lin and Yu-Min Wang
Department of Civil Engineering, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology
Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology 2013 17:4343-4348
Received: August 10, 2012 | Accepted: September 24, 2012 | Published: May 01, 2013
Abstract
Rainfall in Taiwan mainly concentrates in the period of typhoons and torrential storms. In this period the soil severely erodes due to the frail geology, steep gradient and easily weathered parent rock. Currently, the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) is used to estimate soil erosion amount in Taiwan. Although it is regarded as the reference, its results are often inconsistent with the actual situation because the application conditions show great difference. Therefore, an alternative to the USLE is necessary for Taiwan. This study focused on 25 main basins in the mountainous area of Taiwan from which 69 experimental sites were established; 20 in the north, 11 in the center, 21 in the south and 17 in the east. The agency of Soil and Water Conservation Technical Specifications table, soil test in the experimental site and on-site measurements of erosion and redeposition were used to determine soil erodibility index (Km). The results shows that most Km obtained in the north areas were smaller than those from the specification, while Km in the rest of the areas varies without a regular pattern. It was concluded that the Southern areas were more susceptible to soil erosion because of the larger indexes.
Keywords:
Soil erosion, soil Erodibility index, Taiwan mountainous area, universal soil loss equation,
Competing interests
The authors have no competing interests.
Open Access Policy
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
Copyright
The authors have no competing interests.
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ISSN (Online): 2040-7467
ISSN (Print): 2040-7459 |
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