Publication: Modelling soil erosion for land management in ungauged golole catchment in Marsabit County, Kenya
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2018-11-13
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Scientific Research Publishing
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Abstract
This study modeled soil erosion between January 2016 and September 2018for land management in Golole catchment. The Revised Universal Soil LossEquation (RUSLE) constituting the main agents of soil erosion was modeledin a Geographical Information System (GIS) environment. The objective ofthis study was to model soil erosion for land management in the ungaugedGolole catchment. The Golole catchment soil erosion map reveals that withinthe catchment the soil loss was not homogeneous and erosion risk was notthe same. The catchment experiences an annual mean score soil loss rate of279 t/ha that is above the recommended maximum allowable annual soil lossrate of 4 t/ha. The catchment’s soil loss rate is described as high and severerepresenting 70% and 30% of landmass respectively. This study found theneed to decelerate the above soil loss rates to moderate and low levels byadopting soil erosion mitigation measures such as stone contour ridges, manure, strip cropping, and terracing in the cultivated areas and controlledgrazing in the lowland rangeland. The study strongly felt the need to protectthe forest reserve from tree cutting and further human encroachment. Thisstudy concludes that there is the need for further research 1) in the forest reserve areas that showed the greatest rates of soil erosion menace to determinethe underlying causes, and 2) to assess the temporal trends of the soil erosionhazard using high-resolution data.
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Kenyatta University