Mapping Cover and Management Factor Based on Weather Generator and Remote Sensing

The cover and management factor (C) in the Universal Soil Loss Equation is difficult to be parameterized in a large scale developing area due to the costs involved and the lack of soil erosion experiments. This paper presents a new approach based on weather generator and remote sensing to map C factor for use in soil loss prediction. The C factor value is originally defined as an average soil loss ratio weighted according to the distribution of rainfall erosivity index during the year, so we suggested simulating the annual distribution of rainfall erosivity index by CLIGEN model and estimating potential soil loss with the fractional abundances of ground covers resulted from Linear Spectral Mixture Analysis (LSMA) of Landsat TM data. The verification of the proposed approach was conducted with respect to a qualitative analysis of land use and soil loss mapping in the watershed of Chao River, Northeast China.