Abstract
Soil erosion and the sedimentation of reservoirs are serious problems throughout the tropics, and result from severe and uncontrolled environmental degradation. As a result, declining watershed resources continue to put great pressure on the available agricultural land to support households as soil erosion increases, leading to considerable loss of soil fertility and in extreme cases to eventual desertification (Munthali et al. 2011). In the developing regions, cut-and-burn agricultural practices have been identified as the main driver of erosion, and they pose a great risk to the ecosystems to which such watersheds belong (Chimphamba et al. 2006). Physiologically, many tropical river regimes are unstable and pose a great danger to life and infrastructure as they continuously meander and change course (Munthali et al. 2011). Seasonally, it is estimated that tropical floods inundate significant proportions of fertile land (Norplan A.S. in Association with COWI et al. 2003; WWF (World Wide Fund) 2009).
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Munthali, K.G., Murayama, Y. (2012). Watershed Evaluation Using Geospatial Techniques. In: Murayama, Y. (eds) Progress in Geospatial Analysis. Springer, Tokyo. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-4-431-54000-7_17
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