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Morphometric analysis to characterize the soil erosion susceptibility in the western part of lower Gangetic River basin, India

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Abstract

The present study is an attempt to identify the morphometric parameters for determining the soil erosion susceptibility (SES) in upper plateau fringe catchment and lower undulating plain catchment of Kangsabati basin using of multi-criteria decision model as compound factor (CF) and hydrological model as revised universal soil loss equation (RUSLE) under GIS platform. In this research, twenty morphometric parameters of three aspects, namely, linear, areal, and relief were taken from twenty-seven sub-basins to compute the morphometric priority rank using CF model. In contrary, soil erosion factors like rainfall, soil character, slope, and land cover management were taken to measure the potential annual soil erosion using RUSLE. The result showed that fourteen sub-basins in upper catchment (UC) with low compound value represent high morphometric priority rank whereas thirteen sub-basins in lower catchment (LC) with high compound value indicate lower morphometric priority rank. RUSLE estimated that higher rate of mean soil erosion (225 t ha−1 year−1) occurred in UC, whereas low rate of mean soil erosion (74 t ha−1 year−1) occurred in LC. Stepwise least regression of Akaike information criteria (AIC) showed that mean bifurcation ratio (p > 0.013), ruggedness index (p < 0.0001), and form factor (p > 0.034) are the best positive coefficient of erosion susceptibility (ES), but gradient ratio (p > 0.003) and elongation ratio (p > 0.024) have perfect inverse coefficient of high ES in LC. Gradient ratio (p > 0.044) is the only best inverse coefficient parameter of ES in LC due to presence of several conservative practices. Moreover, proper management strategy, effective morphometric, and erosion factors play vital role to determine the ES.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are thankful to the Survey of India (SOI), Irrigation Office of Paschim Medinipur, and Bankura for providing required data. We would like to thank the Editor-in-chief Abdullah M. Al-Amri and four anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions on previous manuscript version that have great role to improve this revised manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, VidyasagarUniversity, WestBengal, Midnapore, India

    Raj Kumar Bhattacharya, Nilanjana Das Chatterjee, Prasenjit Acharya & Kousik Das

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  1. Raj Kumar Bhattacharya
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  2. Nilanjana Das Chatterjee
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  3. Prasenjit Acharya
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  4. Kousik Das
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Correspondence to Raj Kumar Bhattacharya.

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Responsible Editor: Amjad Kallel

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Bhattacharya, R.K., Chatterjee, N.D., Acharya, P. et al. Morphometric analysis to characterize the soil erosion susceptibility in the western part of lower Gangetic River basin, India. Arab J Geosci 14, 501 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-06819-8

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