Recognition of suitable small watersheds for check dam construction on the Loess Plateau

Bibliographic Data

ID21649098
AuthorsYulan Chen (0009-0007-0093-5614, The Research Center of Soil and Water Conservation and Ecological Environment Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Education Yangling PR China), Leichao Bai (0000-0002-5471-8013, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation Northwest A&F University Yangling PR China), Juying Jiao (0000-0003-1413-7190, The Research Center of Soil and Water Conservation and Ecological Environment Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Education Yangling PR China, corresponding author), Nan Wang (0000-0001-5907-4520, The Research Center of Soil and Water Conservation and Ecological Environment Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Education Yangling PR China), Jianjun Li (0000-0003-2872-9648, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation Northwest A&F University Yangling PR China), Qian Xu (0000-0001-8130-0846, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation Northwest A&F University Yangling PR China), Xiqin Yan (0000-0003-1434-7075, The Research Center of Soil and Water Conservation and Ecological Environment Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Education Yangling PR China), Bingzhe Tang (0000-0001-6982-7477, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation Northwest A&F University Yangling PR China)
Year2023
Volume34
Issue14
Pages4441-4455
Publication date2023-08-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLand Degradation and Development (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1085-3278 • E-ISSN: 1099-145X
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/ldr.4788
OpenAlexW4380611295
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited75

Check dams are used for soil and water conservation worldwide, especially on the Chinese Loess Plateau, which has suffered from severe soil and water loss. To promote ecological conservation and high‐quality development in the Yellow River basin, considerable effort should be devoted to building check dams in the small watersheds where the conditions permit on the Loess Plateau. Therefore, suitable small watersheds must be identified for constructing new check dams. In this study, the weighted overlay method (WOM) of the multi‐criteria decision‐making analysis method, the random forest (RF), and the support vector machine (SVM) of machine learning methods were first applied to simulate the suitability of small watersheds for check dam construction in the Ganguyi upstream area of the Yanhe River basin on the Loess Plateau. Accuracy assessment showed that the accuracy of the three models was almost perfect and RF had the highest accuracy of 0.95, followed by SVM (0.87), and WOM (0.83). Meanwhile, the impacts of topographic factors and soil erodibility were found to be generally higher than those of the other factors, and 56% of small watersheds had high and very high suitability for check dam construction, 67% of these small watersheds have already been built as check dams. Finally, a total of 108 small watersheds were found to be suitable in the study area when considering their environmental characteristics. The methodology developed in the study can be used as a preliminary planning step for check dam construction and as a foundation for detailed field investigations in the future, which help to realize the sustainable use of soil and water resources

Cartography · Drainage basin · Geography · Geomorphology · Geotechnical engineering · Loess · Loess plateau · Soil conservation · Structural basin · Computer Science · Environmental Science · Groundwater and Watershed Analysis · Hydrology and Watershed Management Studies · Mathematics · Soil erosion and sediment transport · Geology · Soil Science

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