Integrated Environmental Management and Planning based on Soil Erosion Susceptibility Scenarios

This article presents the identification of soil use potential for different agropastoral and forest scenarios, using an indicator for erosion susceptibility from the spatialized Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE). All USLE factors were spatialized using ArcGis 10.5 software, for the case study of the Cachoeira Cinco Veados Watershed-RS. To determine the R factor, we used the Cassol et al. 2007 equation and a 33-year series of rain data from six climatic stations. For the K factor, published values for the soil classes: Entisol, Ultisol, Oxisol, Molisols were used. From the DEM, the LS factor was obtained, considering six slope classes (0-3, 3-8, 8-20, 20-45, 45-75, >75%). In addition to the actual land use situation in the watershed, nine scenarios were proposed for the C factor. The value of 0.5 was used for the evaluation of conservation practices (P factor). Considering scenarios of current use situation along with the nine other scenarios, the results showed that, by identifying the most susceptible areas in each scenario, it is possible to construct an indicator map of soil compatibilities for each use, considering sustainable limits of soil losses. Therefore, this resulting map has potential use as instrument for land use planning and zoning studies.