SPATIAL IDENTIFICATION AND CLASSIFICATION OF SOIL EROSION PRONE ZONES USING REMOTE SENSING & GIS INTEGRATED ‘RUSLE’ MODEL AND ‘SATEEC GIS SYSTEM’

Soil erosion by water is pronounced critical problem in Himalayan regions due to anthropogenic pressure on its mountainous landscape. Its assessment and mapping of erosion prone areas are very essential for soil conservation and watershed management. The p urpose of this study is to investigate the spatial distribution of average annual soil erosion in Ton Watershed (a sub - basin of Asan watershed) using Remote Sensing and GIS integrated ‘RUSLE' Model and GIS based Hydrological Model of ‘SATEEEC GIS system' i n Dehradun district of Uttarakhand state. Remote sensing and GIS technologies were used to prepare required input layers in the form of Rain Erosivity factor (R), soil erodability factor( K), Length and steepness of Slope factors (LS), crop management fact ors ( C) and support practice factor ( P) to utilize in RUSLE and SATEEC GIS Models. One of the advantages of using SATEEC GIS system is no additional input data, other than those for RUSLE are required to operate the system. Vulnerability to soil erosion risk in the watershed revealed that 24.16 percent of area from RUSLE model, and 20.21 percent of area from SATEEC GIS system was in high soil erosion risk zone. Very low risk of erosion was observed at 68.18 percent and 57.12 percent of areas from SATEEC G IS system and RUSLE model respectively