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What are the dominant influencing factors on the soil erosion evolution process in the Yellow River Basin?

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A Correction to this article was published on 17 September 2021

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Abstract

What the dominant influencing factors are and how changes have occurred over different historical periods in Yellow River Basin are unclear. This study aims to retrieve the annual soil erosion modulus of the Yellow River Basin and utilizes the LMDI model and Geodetector model to identify the dominant driving factors of soil erosion evolution in different historical periods and regions at a pixel scale and landscape scale. Results showed that: (1) The serious (intensive, extreme intensive, and severe) erosion areas were mainly distributed in the Loess Plateau, while the slight and mild erosion areas were mainly distributed in the Hetao Plain, Ordos Plateau, and Guanzhong Plain; (2) During 1981-2019a, the gravity center of soil erosion moved from southwest to northeast, which indicated that the increment and increasing rate of soil erosion in the northeast of the Yellow River Basin were higher than that of the southwestern areas; (3) Increased soil erosion due to the R factor (ISER) was the most widely distributed, accounting for 79.21% of the area where soil erosion increased, while decreased soil erosion due to the C factor and R factor was the most widely distributed, accounting for 49.15% of the area where soil erosion decreased; (4) Before 2000a, precipitation, vegetation, and soil types were the dominant factors affecting the evolution pattern of soil erosion. Through the efforts of human intervention, such as returning farmland to forest or grassland, the explanatory power of land use change in the evolution pattern of soil erosion has increased.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Open Fund of Key Laboratory of National Geographic Census and Monitoring, MNR (grant no. 2020NGCM02); the Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Urban Land Resources Monitoring and Simulation, Ministry of Natural Resources (grant no. KF-2020-05-001); A grant from State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System; Open fund of Key Laboratory of Land use, Ministry of Natural Resources (grant no.20201511835) and Open Fund of Key Laboratory of Meteorology and Ecological Environment of Hebei Province(grant no.Z202001H).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Architectural Engineering, Shandong University of Technology, Zibo, 255000, Shandong, China

    Hongwei Wu, Bing Guo, Baomin Han, Yuefeng Lu & Cuixia Wei

  2. State Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental Information System, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Bing Guo, Fei Yang & Yuefeng Lu

  3. Key Laboratory of Urban Land Resources Monitoring and Simulation, Ministry of Natural Resources, Shenzhen, 518000, China

    Bing Guo

  4. Key Laboratory of National Geographic Census and Monitoring, Ministry of Natural Resources, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Bing Guo

  5. Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Bing Guo & Wenqian Zang

  6. Key Laboratory of Meteorology and Ecological Environment of Hebei Province, Shijiazhuang, 050021, Hebei, China

    Bing Guo

  7. Key Laboratory of Land use, MNR, China Land Survey and Planning Institute, Beijing, 100035, China

    Bing Guo

  8. International School, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, 100876, China

    Haorun Xue

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  1. Hongwei Wu
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  2. Bing Guo
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Correspondence to Bing Guo.

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Communicated by: H. Babaie

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Wu, H., Guo, B., Xue, H. et al. What are the dominant influencing factors on the soil erosion evolution process in the Yellow River Basin?. Earth Sci Inform 14, 1899–1915 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12145-021-00655-w

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