Author(s): SOARES, A. K. M.; REAL, L. S. C.; RODRIGUES, V. G. S.; CRESTANA, S.; FERREIRA, R. R. M.

Summary: Abstract: Gully erosion can lead to irreversible financial and soil losses, which endorse a detailed study of erosive processes and their conditioning factors in each degraded area. However, studies on a multiscale analysis are relatively lacking. Hence, this study sets out to show how to use an integrated and multiscale approach to assess gully erosion in one gully from the Palmital stream watershed, in Nazareno and Conceição da Barra de Minas (Minas Gerais, Brazil). In the watershed scale (1:50,000), we made anaglyphs and mapped the gullies from 2016 and 2019. In the gully scale (1:5,000), an image of the gully was obtained with a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA). They were analyzed to verify the erosion process and to perform fractal analysis. We also collected soil samples for physical and chemical analysis. Results showed connections between gullies and that the erosive process is still active, occurring on different scales inside the gully, including as tubular erosion in the Cambisol, which destabilizes the Oxisol, enlarging the gully head. Fractal analysis results also showed that both the current state of the gully and the erosion process itself are fractal and self-similar.

Publication year: 2024

Types of publication: Paper in annals and proceedings

Unit: Embrapa Instrumentation

Keywords: Anaglyph, Chemical and physical properties, Fractal, Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA), Soil degradation