Abstract
Purpose
Spoil tips are an important source of newly increased water and soil loss in production and construction project areas. However, limited information focuses on the combination of rainfall and inflow effects on soil erosion of spoil tips. Therefore, this study aimed to quantify the effects of rainfall intensity, inflow rate and the interaction of rainfall and inflow on the slope erosion of spoil tips.
Materials and methods
The runoff plot dimensions were 5 m × 1 m × 0.5 m (length × width × depth), and the slopes were set as 32° and 36°. A series of field experiments was conducted to study the effect of rainfall intensity (1.5, 2.0 and 2.5 mm min−1), inflow rate (8, 10 and 12 L min−1) and the interaction between rainfall and inflow on the soil erosion of spoil tips.
Results and discussion
The results showed that rainfall intensity and inflow rate contributed 22.94–49.87% and 9.24–27.90%, 30.96–50.38% and 13.97–69.73%, respectively, to the runoff and soil loss. The interaction between rainfall and inflow contributed 6.18–38.65% to runoff and 20.72–70.83% to soil loss. The unit stream power, runoff shear stress and stream power can be considered the best hydrodynamic parameter to characterise the dynamic mechanisms of soil erosion under rainfall alone, inflow alone and rainfall + inflow, respectively. The corresponding critical values were 0.013 m s−1, 4.230 N m−2 and 0.774 N m−1 s−1. A dimensionless model for predicting slope soil erosion of spoil tips under the combination of rainfall and inflow was established based on the comprehensive consideration of rainfall, inflow, topography and runoff factors, which showed satisfactory prediction results (R2 = 0.887, NSE = 0.758).
Conclusions
Inflow rate was the key element affecting the soil erosion of spoil tips. Therefore, in the management of soil erosion in spoil tips, the focus should be on how to effectively regulate runoff from the platform and slope.
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Funding
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41671283 and 2016YFC0501706-02).
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Zhaoliang Gao, Yongcai Lou and Guanfang Sun designed the experiment. Tong Wu, Yunfeng Cen and Bingni Su carried out the experiment. Yongcai Lou prepared the manuscript with contributions from all co-authors.
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Lou, Y., Wu, T., Sun, G. et al. Effect of combined rainfall and inflow on soil erosion of spoil tips. J Soils Sediments 22, 2229–2245 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-022-03205-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-022-03205-z