The Use of Multicriteria Analysis, GIS, and Statistics to Estimate Soil Erosion
摘要
The soil erosion is one of the most extended damaging phenomena acting in the environment. Soil erosion hazard maps are crucial in areas prone to erosion as they illustrate and depict the distribution of hazards and areas that are susceptible to varying degrees of impact. Integrating Multicriteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) with Geographical Information Systems (GIS) is a robust approach that enhances decision-making by offering increased flexibility and accuracy.to decision- makers to evaluate the effective factors contributing to soil erosion. On this paper, a multicriteria evaluation was applied to soil erosion risk assessment in Elafonisos-Somaros area (70 km from the town of Chania in Crete Island of Greece). The most important factors which are slope, precipitation, land use, soil type, and aspect have been standardized, and weighted by two different methods: 1- pairwise comparison and 2- ranking methods. The aggregation of the seven criteria (five factors and two constraints) was done by the weighted Linear Combination (WLC). The areas with the highest erosion are found primarily on the eastern side, with some minor occurrences on the western side of the region. The maps revealed that the erosion takes place on the eastern part of the area where the steepest slope with the biggest amount of precipitation which are the chief factors contributing to soil erosion. The difference between the outputs was basically on the extent of the eroded areas. To mitigate the risk of soil erosion, decision-makers could propose the following solutions: reforestation, prescribed fires, appropriate grazing, etc. By examining the outputs of this study, the decision-makers should take the appropriate decision to attenuate the soil erosion risk in the study area. Some scenarios could be imagined by the decision-makers to reduce the soil erosion risk: