Improving the Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation by Physical Interpretation of Its Factors

Water

Manaye Getu Tsige¹  Andreas Malcherek¹  Yilma Seleshi² 

[1] Institute of Hydrosciences, Department of Civil Engineering and Environmental Sciences, Universität der Bundeswehr München, 85579 Neubiberg, Germany;School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa P.O. Box 1176, Ethiopia;

关键词: USLE;    RUSLE;    MUSLE;    potential energy;    SWAT+;    Ethiopia;   

DOI  :  10.3390/w14091450

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

A primary objective of this paper is to change the input data requirement of the Modified Universal Soil Loss Equation (MUSLE) for the calculation of its runoff factor for possible application in data-scarce areas. Basically, the MUSLE was developed for a small agricultural watershed, where the extent of erosion is from sheet to rill erosion, but we cannot exactly tell whether it considers gully erosion or not. The underlying physical assumption to improve the MUSLE is that the amount of potential energy of runoff is proportional to the shear stress for sediment transport from a slope field and the kinetic energy of the runoff at the bottom of the slope field for gully formation. The improved MUSLE was tested at four watersheds in Ethiopia, and it showed better performance (i.e., the minimum performance is 84%) over the original MUSLE (i.e., the minimum performance was 80%), for all four watersheds under our consideration. We expect the same to be true for other watersheds of Ethiopia.

【 授权许可】

Unknown