In Turkey, especially in the semi-arid and arid Mediterranean regions, soil erosion is one of the major threats to soil conservation and water resources. Soil erosion and sedimentation reduce the economic life of dams through Regorafenib chemical structure the inflow and deposition of order inhibitor soil particles. In addition, sedimentation results in dramatic Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries environmental impacts on water quality and aquatic habitat [2-3]. According to GDREC [4], over 345 million tones of sediment enters the rivers, lakes, dams, and seas per year in Turkey. Therefore, sustainable management and conservation of such expensive investments and their watersheds are crucial for the long-term quality of life and the national economy.
The amount of soil erosion is mainly affected by vegetation cover, topographic features, climatic variables, and soil characteristics.
The human activities and large-scale developments Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries alter the vegetation cover, impacting upon the soil erosion rate [5]. Topographic Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries features such as ground slope, slope length, and shape most affect rill and interrill erosion [6]. The most Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries important climatic variables are rainfall amount and precipitation intensity, which are called rainfall erosivity [6]. Besides, temperature is another important climatic variable since it affects the vegetative materials which are used in mulching to Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries control erosion. Soil erodibility is mainly affected by aggregate stability, texture, depth, organic Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries Inhibitors,Modulators,Libraries matter, and stoniness [7].
Assessing the soil erosion rate is essential for the development of adequate erosion prevention measures for sustainable management of land GSK-3 and water resources.
Geographic Information System (GIS) technologies are valuable tools in developing environmental models through their advance features of data storage, management, analysis, and display [8]. The Remote Sensing (RS) technology has been used to provide the land use/cover information Cilengitide by using digital image processing techniques [9]. There have been many studies on modeling soil erosion by utilizing RS and GIS technologies [10-13].The capabilities of these technologies even increase when they are integrated with empirical erosion prediction models [14].
While soil erosion models only calculate the amount of soil erosion based on the relationships between various erosion factors [15], RS and GIS integrated erosion prediction models do not only estimate soil loss but also provide the spatial distributions of the erosion [16]. sellectchem Especially, generating accurate erosion risk maps in GIS environment is very important to locate the areas with high erosion risks [17] and to develop adequate erosion prevention techniques [18]. Sazbo et al., 1998 [19] conducted a study where RS FTY720 S1P Receptor and GIS technologies were successfully used for land degradation and erosion mapping. Another study by Bojie et al.