Land Degradation Due to Soil Wind Erosion in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions with the Aid of Geo- Information Technology

This research integrated the Wind Erosion Equation (WEQ) with Geo-information (RS, GIS and GPS) techniques to quantify the land degradation caused by wind erosion risk monitoring and the northern part of Shaanxi province in China was taken as a case. In addition, samples were collected from the soil surface (0 - 30 cm) during the period of study. The WEQ was incorporated into a vector oriented GIS (ArcView) which was also used for data management, manipulation, and analysis. Calculated erosion rates from individual fields ranged from 3.9 to 249.7 (mg. ha -1 yr -1 ) with an average annual soil loss of 95 (mg. ha -1 yr -1 ). The described approach assesses soil erosion risk by wind on a regional scale and evaluates soil protection strategies. This paper also discusses a method for land degradation risk monitoring and estimation. Vegetation Index (VI) and Crust Index (CI) can be taken from two Landsat TM senses in 1987 and 1999. They are utilized for recognizing the features of land degradation in the location study. ER-mapper and Arc/Info software were used to manage and manipulate thematic data, to process satellite images, soil and vegetation indices, and to tabulate data source. In terms of statistic analysis, 6,647.64 km 2 (37.81%) of the land area has a slight risk of land degradation by wind erosion, 4,182.69 km 2 (23.79%) has a moderate risk of land degradation by wind erosion, and 6,751.38 km 2 (38.40%) of the total land area is facing a severe to very severe risk of land degradation by wind erosion. The study area, in general, is exposed to a high risk of land degradation caused by wind erosion.