Evaluation of the EUROSEM model for predicting the effects of erosion-control blankets on runoff and interrill soil erosion by water

The European Soil Erosion Model (EUROSEM, Morgan et al., 1998) is an event-based soil erosion model which predicts runoff and sediment discharge for different environmental conditions. Applying geotextiles or erosion-control blankets (ECB’s) on the soil surface significantly affects surface seal formation and topsoil properties and therefore controls runoff and soil erosion rates during a rainfall event. Since these within-storm changes of soil surface characteristics and hydrological conditions are not incorporated in EUROSEM, errors in runoff and soil erosion predictions may occur for soil surfaces covered with ECB’s.Therefore, the objective of this paper is to evaluate and improve the performance of a research version of the physically-based erosion model EUROSEM (EUROSEM-2010; Borselli and Torri, 2010) for simulating the effects of ECB’s on runoff and interrill soil erosion by water during intense simulated rainfall events. Results of model simulations are compared with experimental results of interrill erosion using biological (i.e. natural) ECB’s and simulated rainfall. Because ECB’s applied on the soil surface retard seal formation, the differences between observed and predicted runoff rates and sediment discharges are rather high during the first 20-30 min of the simulated rainstorm. Therefore, a simple approach is proposed to cope with the dynamic evolution of some soil characteristics, i.e. saturated hydraulic conductivity, soil erodibility and soil cohesion, during an intense rainfall event. This time-dependent approach improves the predictions of runoff rate and sediment discharge during the first 20-30 min of a rainfall event and increases the model efficiency (i.e. a measure for the goodness of fit) from 0.84 to 0.98 and from 0.48 to 0.68 for the total runoff volume and soil loss, respectively. For most conditions, the predicted final sediment discharge is still considerably larger than the observed values, which can be partly attributed to the deposition of sediment in the bare soil patches (i.e. inter-weave open areas) of the ECB’s, which is not simulated by EUROSEM in this study. This model approach increases our understanding of the effects of ECB’s on within-storm changes in hydrological conditions and soil surface characteristics.     

EUROSEM模型对晋西黄绵土坡面侵蚀过程的模拟应用

晋西黄绵土坡面因其土壤、降雨等条件极易造成严重水土流失,本文基于不同坡长(2、3、4 m)与雨强(60、90、120 mm/h)组合方式下的野外人工模拟降雨试验,应用EUROSEM模型对坡面径流侵蚀过程及产流产沙总量进行模拟,通过对比分析模拟值与实测值,评价该模型对晋西黄绵土坡面土壤侵蚀过程的模拟效果及在该区的适用性。结果表明:坡长、雨强与产流产沙总量均为正相关关系,雨强对其影响较坡长大,但二者之间具有制约作用,偏相关分析显示当二者单独作用于产流产沙总量时,相关性均增大,且坡长与产流产沙总量的相关性明显较共同作用时增大;模型模拟产流率峰值出现时间与实测值稍有偏差,而模拟产沙率峰值首次出现时间较实测值提前了约5 min;当雨强大于60 mm/h,坡长由3 m延长至4 m时,产流产沙总量实测增量较2 m延长至3 m减小,而4 m坡长条件下,产流产沙总量模拟值几乎均大于实测值。总体而言,EUROSEM模型在晋西黄绵土坡面上有较好的适用性,模型对产流过程的模拟较产沙过程更为准确,产流产沙总量的模型模拟值与实测值间相对误差RE在许可范围之内,效率系数ME分别为0.978、0.974。