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Spatial Analysis and Prediction of Soil Erosion in a Complex Watershed of Cameron Highlands, Malaysia

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Gully Erosion Studies from India and Surrounding Regions

Part of the book series: Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation ((ASTI))

Abstract

Land degradation in the form of erosion is a serious geo-hazard threatening land and water resources sustainability. Its socioeconomic and ecological impacts necessitated its geospatial prediction via susceptibility analysis. Accuracy of susceptibility mapping depends largely on modeling techniques and causative factors (CFs) considered. The study implements scarcely used CFs and support vector machine (SVM) technique for geospatial prediction of soil erosion for low and peak rainfall cycles in a complex watershed of Cameron Highlands Malaysia. The CFs considered are non-redundant static (drainage density, length slope, lineament density, and erodibility) along with some dynamic (surface temperature, soil moisture index, rainfall erosivity, and vegetation index) CFs. Four kernel functions of SVM with optimized kernel parameters were used for spatial prediction of erosion for both rainfall cycles. The model performances were validated using the commonest evaluation criteria. The results indicated that polynomial SVM outperformed other models and was used in developing soil erosion susceptibility maps. The distribution pattern of erosion showed that majority of the area are “low and moderately” susceptible. The analysis shows that most of the highly susceptible locations are within the urban and agriculture land-use. The study provides information on erosional land forms that could be advanced to gullies. This medium-scale susceptibility map produced could be useful for sustainable watershed management for mitigating erosion.

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Acknowledgment

This research was funded by Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS via 2016 URIF grant 0153AA-G04.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Water Resources and Environmental Engineering, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

    Taofeeq Sholagberu Abdulkadir, Olayinka Gafar Okeola & Saheed Adeniyi Aremu

  2. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UniversitiTeknologi PETRONAS, Bandar Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia

    Taofeeq Sholagberu Abdulkadir, Raza Ul Mustafa Muhammad & Wan Yusof Khamaruzaman

  3. Centre for Urban Resource Sustainability, Institute of Self-Sustainable Building, UniversitiTeknologi PETRONAS, Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia

    Raza Ul Mustafa Muhammad

  4. Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

    Bashir Adelodun

  5. Lower Niger River Basin Development Authority, Ilorin, Kwara State, Nigeria

    Saheed Adeniyi Aremu

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  1. Taofeeq Sholagberu Abdulkadir
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  2. Raza Ul Mustafa Muhammad
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Raja N. L. Khan Women’s College (Autonomous), Medinipur, West Bengal, India

    Pravat Kumar Shit

  2. Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Engineering, College of Agriculture, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran

    Hamid Reza Pourghasemi

  3. Aarvee Associates Architects, Engineers & Consultants Pvt. Ltd, Hyderabad, India

    Gouri Sankar Bhunia

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Abdulkadir, T.S., Muhammad, R.U.M., Okeola, O.G., Khamaruzaman, W.Y., Adelodun, B., Aremu, S.A. (2020). Spatial Analysis and Prediction of Soil Erosion in a Complex Watershed of Cameron Highlands, Malaysia. In: Shit, P., Pourghasemi, H., Bhunia, G. (eds) Gully Erosion Studies from India and Surrounding Regions. Advances in Science, Technology & Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-23243-6_31

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