Geospatial Technology for Climate Change: Influence of ENSO and IOD on Soil Erosion

Climate change in Indonesia causes changes in the probability of extreme wet and dry rain events. This incident is closely related to the El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) phenomena. Regional climate impacts of ENSO and IOD on rainfall anomalies have resulted in extreme droughts and wet and are related to soil erosion. In this study, we use remote sensing data and geographic information system (GIS) and adopt the Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) to predict soil erosion and their relation to climate changes in Unda watershed, Bali, Indonesia. Several remote sensing data are used to calculate the erosivity (R), length slope (LS) factor, vegetation factor (C), and conservation practice (P) factor and combine with erodibility (K) factor from laboratory analysis. The result indicates that there are dynamics of R and C factor values from remote sensing data during El Niño in 2015, La Niña in 2016, and positive IOD in 2019. This study displays the impact of climate change on soil erosion values, especially in tropical areas where the climate is closely related with ENSO and IOD.