Current and future assessments of soil erosion by water on the Tibetan Plateau based on RUSLE and CMIP5 climate models

Hongfen Teng; Zongzheng Liang; Songchao Chen; Yong Liu; Raphael A Viscarra Rossel; Adrian Chappell; Wu Yu; Zhou Shi

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.146

Current and future assessments of soil erosion by water on the Tibetan Plateau based on RUSLE and CMIP5 climate models

Sci Total Environ. 2018 Sep 1:635:673-686. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.146. Epub 2018 Apr 24.

Authors

Hongfen Teng¹, Zongzheng Liang¹, Songchao Chen², Yong Liu¹, Raphael A Viscarra Rossel³, Adrian Chappell⁴, Wu Yu⁵, Zhou Shi⁶

Affiliations

¹ College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China.
² INRA, Unité InfoSol, 45075 Orléans, France; UMR SAS, INRA, Agrocampus Ouest, Rennes 35042, France.
³ CSIRO Land and Water, Bruce E. Butler Laboratory, P.O. Box 1700, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia.
⁴ School of Earth and Ocean Science, Cardiff University, Cardiff CF10 3XQ, UK.
⁵ Department of Resources and Environment, Tibet Agricultural and Animal Husbandry College, Linzhi 860000, China.
⁶ College of Environmental and Resource Sciences, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310058, China. Electronic address: shizhou@zju.edu.cn.

PMID: 29680758
DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.04.146

Abstract

Soil erosion by water is accelerated by a warming climate and negatively impacts water security and ecological conservation. The Tibetan Plateau (TP) has experienced warming at a rate approximately twice that observed globally, and heavy precipitation events lead to an increased risk of erosion. In this study, we assessed current erosion on the TP and predicted potential soil erosion by water in 2050. The study was conducted in three steps. During the first step, we used the Revised Universal Soil Equation (RUSLE), publicly available data, and the most recent earth observations to derive estimates of annual erosion from 2002 to 2016 on the TP at 1-km resolution. During the second step, we used a multiple linear regression (MLR) model and a set of climatic covariates to predict rainfall erosivity on the TP in 2050. The MLR was used to establish the relationship between current rainfall erosivity data and a set of current climatic and other covariates. The coefficients of the MLR were generalised with climate covariates for 2050 derived from the fifth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP5) models to estimate rainfall erosivity in 2050. During the third step, soil erosion by water in 2050 was predicted using rainfall erosivity in 2050 and other erosion factors. The results show that the mean annual soil erosion rate on the TP under current conditions is 2.76tha^-1y^-1, which is equivalent to an annual soil loss of 559.59×10⁶t. Our 2050 projections suggested that erosion on the TP will increase to 3.17tha^-1y^-1 and 3.91tha^-1y^-1 under conditions represented by RCP2.6 and RCP8.5, respectively. The current assessment and future prediction of soil erosion by water on the TP should be valuable for environment protection and soil conservation in this unique region and elsewhere.

Keywords: Climate change; Future erosion; RUSLE; Soil erosion by water; Tibetan Plateau.