Quantifying the contributions of precipitation, topography and human activity and their coupling to the development of permanent gully

• Published in: Geoderma 2024-09, Vol.449, p.117015, Article 117015
• Main Authors: Liu, Xin, Guo, Mingming, Chen, Zhuoxin, Zhang, Xingyi, Yang, Fan, Zhang, Shengmin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Climate change; Gully development; Human activity; Northeast China; Topography
• ISSN: 0016-7061; 1872-6259
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geoderma.2024.117015

[Display omitted] •Linear, areal, and volumetric gully erosion rates were quantified during 2013–2021.•Ridge orientation, road and shelterbelt had different effects on gully erosion rate.•Horizontal ridge tillage can promote headcut retreat under heavy precipitation.•Tillage downslope on both sides of gully is recommended to limit gully expansion.•The coupling of topography and human activity mainly contributes to gully erosion. Gully erosion poses greater threat to ecological and food security globally. The gully development rate and the contributions of primary influencing factors have not been thoroughly understood, primarily due to the complicated environmental conditions characterized by climate, soil, topography, and human activities. Therefore, this study was conducted to explore the gully development and contributions of its driving factors from 2013 to 2021 based on historical Google Earth images and field investigation in a typical rolling hilly watershed of northeast China. The climatic factors reflected by precipitation, topographical factors related to gully, and anthropological factors reflected by tillage ridge orientation and linear anthropological factors (LAF) including roads and shelterbelts were obtained. The tillage effect index (TEI), LAF effect index (LEI) and the distance from gully to LAF (DL) were calculated to analyze the influence of anthropological factors on gully development. The results showed that the linear, areal and volumetric gully development rates (RL, RA and RV) showed great variabilities in different periods with the average of 5.69 m year−1, 137.37 m2 year−1 and 428.54 m3 year−1, respectively. The accumulated RL, RA and RV increased exponentially or linearly with accumulated precipitation amount (P), erosive rainfall duration (RD), erosive rainfall (ER), maximum 30-min rainfall intensity (I30) and rainfall erosivity (RE) increased (P