Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Soil erosion is a form of land degradation. It is the process of moving surface soil with the action of external forces such as wind or water. Tillage also causes soil erosion. As outlined by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (UN SDG) #15, it is a global challenge to “combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.” In order to advance this goal, we studied and modeled the soil erosion depth of a typical watershed in Taiwan using 26 morphometric factors derived from a digital elevation model (DEM) and 10 environmental factors. Feature selection was performed using the Boruta algorithm to determine 15 factors with confirmed importance and one tentative factor. Then, machine learning models, including the random forest (RF) and gradient boosting machine (GBM), were used to create prediction models validated by erosion pin measurements. The results show that GBM, coupled with 15 important factors (confirmed), achieved the best result in the context of root mean square error (RMSE) and Nash–Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE). Finally, we present the maps of soil erosion depth using the two machine learning models. The maps are useful for conservation planning and mitigating future soil erosion.
DOI: 10.3390/ijgi10070452
Authors: Kieu Nguyen, Walter Chen
Institution: National Taipei University of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Soil Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Life on land
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,512
OpenAlex ID: W3176554196