The Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Land Use Land Cover Change, and Its Impact on Soil Erosion in Tagaw Watershed, Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia

Tadele Melese; Abebe Senamaw; Tatek Belay; Getachew Bayable

doi:10.1002/gch2.202000109

The Spatiotemporal Dynamics of Land Use Land Cover Change, and Its Impact on Soil Erosion in Tagaw Watershed, Blue Nile Basin, Ethiopia

Glob Chall. 2021 May 7;5(7):2000109. doi: 10.1002/gch2.202000109. eCollection 2021 Jul.

Authors

Tadele Melese¹, Abebe Senamaw¹, Tatek Belay², Getachew Bayable¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Natural Resource Management College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Bahir Dar University P.O. Box 5501 Bahir Dar Ethiopia.
² Department of Geography and Environmental Studies College of Social Science Debre Tabor University P.O. Box 273, Debre Tabor Ethiopia.

Abstract

The Blue Nile basin is one of the hot-spots of soil erosion areas in Ethiopia. However, the impact of land use changes on soil erosion is poorly understood in the Tagaw watershed. Hence, the objective of the study is to assess the impact of land use changes on soil erosion in Tagaw watershed over the last 31 years. Rainfall, soil, satellite images and topographic data are acquired from field survey and secondary sources. A Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model is used to estimate soil erosion. The mean annual and total potential soil losses of the watershed are 19.3, 22.9, 26 and 0.06-503.56, 0.11-516.67, and 0.00-543.5 tons ha^-1 yr^-1 for 1995, 2006 and 2016 respectively. The highest soil loss is found for bare land. The RUSLE model further showed that the highest soil erosion occurred in 2016 whereas the lowest soil erosion occurred in 1995.

Keywords: RUSLE; Tagaw watershed; land use land cover; soil erosion hazard.