Soil loss estimate in the cubatão do norte river hydrographic basin, northeast of santa catarina, Brazil
International Journal of Development Research
Soil loss estimate in the cubatão do norte river hydrographic basin, northeast of santa catarina, Brazil
Received 09th April, 2017; Received in revised form 24th May, 2017; Accepted 16th June, 2017; Published online 22nd July, 2017
Copyright ©2017, Oliveira and Vieira. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
The main objective of this paper was to apply the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) through Geographical Information System (GIS) in the Cubatão do Norte watershed, in Joinville and Garuva municipalities of Santa Catarina State. The map of annual estimated soil loss by water erosion showed minimum erosion rates of 429.28, average of 854.61 and maximum of 1,579.49 t/ha/year. Soil loss due to water erosion in the Cubatão do Norte watershed can be considered low, since 97.58% of the basin area presented none or slight annual average soil loss, ranging from 0 to 10 t/ha/year. Only 1.79% of the watershed has annual moderate soil loss with values ranging from 10.1 to 50 t/ha/year. The high and very high-rate of soil loss with values greater than 50 t/ha/year represents only 0.50% of the watershed studied. The large area covered by native forest was the principal maintenance factor of low erosion rates. The exposed soil and the early stage vegetation, located in medium and high slopes, Argissolo Amarelo (Acrisol) and Cambissolo Háplico (Cambisol), presented the highest rates of soil loss due to water erosion.
