A GIS-based Assessment of Soil Erosion in Wood-pastures of Southern Transylvania

ProEnvironment Promediu

Cristina Alina Ficuț¹ 

[1] University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, 3-5 Manastur St., 400372 Cluj-Napoca

关键词: wood-pastures;    soil erosion;    RUSLE;    GIS;    ecosystem services;   

DOI  :  

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Bioflux SRL

【 摘 要 】

Wood-pastures are landscape elements with high natural, cultural and economic importance. Wood-pastures combines livestock grazing with trees and shrubs. They provide several ecosystem services, including biodiversity, soil protection, carbon storage, water management. However, wood-pastures have been through a sharp decline all over Europe, mainly due to environmentally uncontrolled intensification of agriculture, abandonment and improper management of the land use, which resulted in the loss of the valuable ecosystem services which they provide. In this paper, we investigate the potential of wood-pastures to provide regulating ecosystem services by their ability to prevent or mitigate the soil erosion. The assessment process has been performed by applying the RUSLE model, using GIS. The model has been applied in eight study-polygons, corresponding to four villages situated in the southern Transylvania, Romania. Our results show that wood-pastures have a lower predicted annual soil loss than pastures with accidental presence of trees. We suggest that wood-pastures are more resilient with regard to soil erosion than tree-less pastures.

【 授权许可】

CC BY