Improving estimation of water soil erosion by introducing lithological formation for environmental remediation

Soil erosion is a serious and complex environmental problem worldwide, especially in the centre west of Tunisia. Whereas the construction of hill reservoirs is part of the soil and water conservation strategy, many of these have a siltation problem. Dhkekira is one of the smallest watersheds in central Tunisia whose most lithological formation consists of materials that are quite susceptible to water erosion. Due to the lack of low-scale lithological data, digital IR aerial photos with 2 m spatial resolution were considered. A semi-automatic classification of aerial photos, based on the image's textural indices is developed. The lithologic map extracted from aerial photos was used as input for ANSWERS-2000 water erosion model. Results obtained indicate first, with the semi-automatic classification of the mean and standard deviation of the thumbnail histograms that image output could help to give an idea about the existence of some surface lithological formation. The model applied to Dhkekira watershed showed that the spatial difference in water erosion was not caused only by land cover and slope, but also by lithological formation. The percentage of each lithological formation in sediment yield at the Dhkekira hill reservoir was estimated to be 69% sediment yield from Pleistocene and 19.7% from Lutetian-Priabonian.