Research Context
Human activity, climate change, and land-use change have accelerated soil erosion worldwide, threatening soil fertility and stability. Oman lacks erosion assessments altogether, because the data to make them is scarce.
Historical hazard assessment of climate and land use–land cover effects on soil erosion using remote sensing: Case study of Oman
Method
A 30 m soil-erosion framework built on the G2 erosion model, integrating satellite and reanalysis datasets with machine-learning models. It resolves climate at 1-hour steps and land use at 30 m across almost four decades, 1985 to 2017. Extreme Value Analysis converts the long-term annual erosion estimates into hazard maps.
Key Insights
- Soil erosion shows increasing, perilous trends in the high altitudes of Oman, a substantial risk to soil health and stability.
- Coupling a 30 m G2 erosion model with satellite and reanalysis data makes assessment possible in a region with too little ground data to support it otherwise.
- Extreme Value Analysis turns annual erosion estimates into hazard maps aimed at policymakers, not just at researchers.
Abstract
Human activities, climate change, and land-use alterations accelerated soil erosion in recent decades and imposed significant threats to soil fertility and stability worldwide. Understanding and quantifying the spatiotemporal variation of soil erosion risks is crucial for adopting the best management practices for surface soils conservation. Here, we present a novel high-resolution (30 m) soil erosion framework based on the G2 erosion model by integrating satellite and reanalysis datasets and Machine Learning (ML) models to assess soil erosion risks and hazards spatiotemporally. The proposed method reflects the impacts of climate change in 1 h time resolutions and land use in 30 m scales on soil erosion risks for almost 4 decades (between 1985 and 2017). The soil erosion hazardous maps were generated/evaluated using Extreme Value Analysis (EVA), utilizing long-term annual soil erosion estimations/projections to aid policymakers in developing management strategies to protect lands against extreme erosion. The proposed framework is evaluated in the Sultanate of Oman, which lacks soil erosion estimation/assessment studies due to data scarcity. Results indicate that soil erosion has increasing perilous trends in high altitudes of the Sultanate of Oman that may cause substantial risks to soil health and stability.