Assessing aggregate stability of soils under various land use/land cover in a watershed of Mid-Himalayan Landscape

Year 2019, Volume: 8 Issue: 2, 131 - 143, 01.04.2019

Abhisek Kumar Singh Suresh Kumar Justin George Kalambukattu

https://doi.org/10.18393/ejss.541319

Cited By: 4

Abstract

Soil
aggregate stability is considered as an important indicator of soil quality in
the landscapes witnessing land degradation due to soil erosion by water. An
increase in anthropogenic activities over the period of time has accelerated
soil erosion that necessitated need to assess soil aggregate stability in
various land use/land cover in the hilly and mountainous landscape. The study
investigated the soil aggregate stability of surface soils in different land
use/ land cover classes, hillslope unites as well as in respect to terrain
parameters in the watershed. The watershed located in mid- Himalayan region of
Tehri Garhwal district, Uttarakhand, India covering an area of 196 ha. The
elevation of the watershed ranges from 1200 m to 1927 m. CartoDEM was used to
derive terrain parameters i.e., aspect, slope and terrain indices like Terrain
Wetness Index (TWI) and Stream Power Index (SPI) of the watershed. Among the
various land use /land cover classes, aggregate stability in crop land was
found to be in the range of 0.16 (lower hillslope) to 0.28 (mid hillslope), in
forest ranged from 0.18 (mid hillslope) to 0.28 (upper hillslope) and in dense
scrub ranged from 0.16 (middle slope) to 0.32 (upper/lower hillslope). The
aggregate stability was further analyzed in relation with various soil (carbon,
nitrogen, sand, silt, clay and pH) and terrain (slope, elevation, TWI and SPI)
variables. Among these variables soil carbon, nitrogen, elevation, TWI and SPI
were found to have moderate to high degree of correlation with soil aggregate
stability. Prediction model developed by using the various significant soil and
terrain parameters were found to be more effective (r2 = 0.50) than the models
developed using only soil parameters (r2= 0.36) or only terrain parameters (r2=
0.37).

Keywords

Land Use/ land cover, Mid-Himalaya, soil aggregate stability, terrain parameters

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