Abstract
The present paper attempts to quantify the amount of soil loss occurring in the Mayurakshi River basin of eastern India with the help of the empirical Revised Universal Soil Equation (RUSLE) Model. The areas of high erosion were identified and their spatial and temporal patterns and trends were monitored for the years 2008 and 2018. It was observed that the average soil loss increased by about 6% from 2008 to 2018. Among a variety of causal factors, the Shannon’s Entropy Index used in this study has identified the slope length and steepness factor (LS factor) as the most significant causal factor of erosion in the studied river basin. One of the novel approaches used in this study is the application of landscape ecological metrics in the domain of temporal erosion monitoring. An important conclusion drawn from the analysis is that the patches of high and moderate erosion are increasing significantly in terms of areal extent, whereas the extent of the patches of low erosion is decreasing with time. Therefore, appropriate management strategies prioritised on the high and moderate erosion patches are the need of the hour.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude for the fellowship received by the first author from The University of Burdwan, West Bengal (Ref. No. FC(Sc.) RS/SF/GEO./2021-22/WFH-60). Acknowledgements are also due to Dr George Mathew, Associate Editor, Journal of Earth System Science, and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which helped in improving the clarity of an earlier version of this paper.
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Subha Roy initiated this research, designed the methodology, made field investigations and laboratory analysis and analysed the data. Souvik Das accompanied in the fieldwork and carried out the analysis of satellite imageries. Somasis Sengupta supervised the entire research work, was involved in designing the methodology of this work and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. Sukhendu Mistry accompanied in the field and was involved in the manuscript editing. Jaya Chatterjee was involved in the preparation of maps and GIS analysis.
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Roy, S., Das, S., Sengupta, S. et al. Monitoring the temporal dimension of soil erosion in Mayurakshi Basin, India: A novel approach integrating RUSLE, Shannon’s entropy and landscape ecological metrics. J Earth Syst Sci 131, 249 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-022-02006-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12040-022-02006-9