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Combined effects of rainfall regime and plot length on runoff and soil loss in the Loess Plateau of China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2019

Jianbo LIU ,
Guangyao GAO ,
Shuai WANG  and
Bojie FU
Jianbo LIU
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. Email: [email protected] University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.
Guangyao GAO
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. Email: [email protected]
Shuai WANG
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. Email: [email protected]
Bojie FU*
Affiliation:
State Key Laboratory of Urban and Regional Ecology, Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China. Email: [email protected]
*
*Corresponding author
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Abstract

The purpose of this paper was to study the interaction effects of rainfall regime and slope length on runoff and soil loss under different land uses. Event runoff and soil loss in forest, shrub and grass were measured in plots with lengths of 5, 9 and 13m in the Loess Plateau from 2008 to 2016. A total of 59 erosive rainfall events were recorded and classified into three rainfall regimes. Firstly, the results showed that the runoff coefficient was grass>shrub>forest, and soil loss was grass>forest>shrub, but the differences between forest and shrub in runoff and between grass and forest in soil loss did not reach significant levels. Secondly, rainfall regimes had an important effect on runoff and soil loss under different land uses. The lowest runoff coefficients and the highest soil loss in regime 2 were found in shrub and forest land, respectively, which differed from that of regime 1. In total, rainfall regime 1 had the highest runoff coefficient of 0.84–2.06%, followed by regime 3 with 0.33–0.88% and regime 2 with 0.04–0.06%. Soil loss in forest and grass land had a different order of regime 3>regime 1>regime 2. Thirdly, both the runoff coefficient and soil loss decreased with increasing plot length, while the effect of slope length on runoff/soil loss were influenced by land use type and rainfall regimes.

Keywords

erosionland userainfall intensityrunoff coefficientslope length
Type
Articles
Information
Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of The Royal Society of Edinburgh , Volume 109 , Issue 3-4: Earth Surface Processes and Environmental Sustainability in China , September 2018 , pp. 397 - 406
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Society of Edinburgh 2019 

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