Erosion - Monitoring, Measuring, and Modeling Erosion

Monitoring, Measuring, and Modeling Erosion

Monitoring and modeling of erosion processes can help us better understand the causes, make predictions, and plan how to implement preventative and restorative strategies. However, the complexity of erosion processes and the number of areas that must be studied to understand and model them (e.g. climatology, hydrology, geology, chemistry, physics, etc.) makes accurate modelling quite challenging. Erosion models are also non-linear, which makes them difficult to work with numerically, and makes it difficult or impossible to scale up to making predictions about large areas from data collected by sampling smaller plots.

The most commonly used model for predicting soil loss from water erosion is the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE), which estimates the average annual soil loss as:

where R is the rainfall erosivity factor, K is the soil erodibility factor, L and S are topographic factors representing length and slope, and C and P are cropping management factors.

Erosion is measured and further understood using tools such as the micro-erosion meter (MEM) and the traversing micro-erosion meter (TMEM). The MEM has proved helpful in measuring bedrock erosion in various ecosystems around the world. It can measure both terrestrial and oceanic erosion. On the other hand, the TMEM can be used to track the expanding and contracting of volatile rock formations and can give a reading of how quickly a rock formation is deteriorating.