Climate Change Impact on Soil Erosion in Sub-tropical Environment

This work focuses on the potential impact of climate change on soil erosion in a monsoon-dominated sub-tropical region. Water-induced soil erosion due to extreme rainfall during the monsoon period is a major problem worldwide, from different environmental and socio-economic perspectives. This study region covered (South Bengal) is one of the fertile agricultural belts that produces a good amount of produce and contributes to the country's GDP. However, the rate of agricultural output has decreased rapidly in recent times due to a decline in soil fertility.

The monsoon-dominated sub-tropical region has unique characteristics in terms of seasonal temperature fluctuations and the availability of rainfall events. The sub-tropical region is densely populated, with the majority of the population relying on rain-fed agricultural production systems. The declining rate of agricultural production has also established that soil fertility is declining and soil erosion is increasing. Numerous studies show that soil erosion is the major cause of the region's rapidly increasing trend of land degradation. A homeostatic mechanism cannot replace soil erosion, and a gap arises between soil erosion and regolith formation. Extreme changes in land use and land cover, population growth and the lacking support for traditional agricultural practices and management practices can accelerate the rate of soil erosion and its associated reservoir sedimentation in most countries of the tropical and sub-tropical environment. Quantitative information with maximum possible accuracy through validation regarding soil loss can be an essential part of the appropriate and sustainable soil and water conservation planning. The precise aspects of modern day management strategies are soil erosion susceptibility mapping using empirical and semi-empirical models in a GIS platform or the use of probability statistics.

The main objective of this work is to propose the most suitable developmentstrategies considering the amount of soil erosion for the present and future periods. Extensive field research has been done to identify the support practice factor that the local stakeholders adopt in this region.

Auteur

Dr. Subodh Chandra Pal is Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography of the University of Burdwan in India. He has completed his Doctoral research in the fields of Hydrogeomorphology. His fields of expertise are Fluvial Geomorphology, Pedo-geomorphology, Land Degradation, Soil Erosion, Gully Erosion, Landslide Vulnerability and Climate Change. His current research is focused on understanding fluvial processes causing hazards and disaster, forest health monitoring, machine learning techniques, climate change impact and vulnerability assessment. Rabin Chakrabortty is a Research Scholar at the Department of Geography of the University of Burdwan in India. His research interests include Land Degradation, Soil Erosion, Gully Erosion, Climate Change, Geospatial approaches in Natural Hazard Management and Monitoring, Machine Learning and Image Processing and Hybrid Image Generation. He is specialized in Pedogeomorphologyand has published 30 research papers as well as five book chapters.