Page 155 - Çevre Şehir ve İklim Dergisi İngilizce - Özel Sayı

İskender Demirtaş - Günay Erpu

When DEMMS outputs are compared to land use types (Table 2), the
highest erosion is seen with 53.66% in pasture and 38.71% agricultural areas
respectively. It was found that the lowest erosion occurred in forest areas with
4.17% (Erpul et al., 2018).
In pasture areas, 344.6 million tons of soil was carried due to water erosion
(Erpul et al., 2018). Based on the results of DEMMS, it was found very light and
light erosion occurred in 57.64%, moderate in 13.59%, and severe and very
severe in 28.77% of Türkiye’s pasture areas (Erpul et al., 2018). The soil loss,
which occurred as a result of erosion, was found to be 18.36 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ (Erpul
et al., 2018), and this amount is 2.23 times higher than the annual average soil
loss occurring in our country.
According to DEMMS results, annually 248.6 million tons soil erode in
agricultural areas in total (Erpul et al., 2018). In 73.5% of agricultural areas very
light and light, in 11.91% moderate, in 14.6% severe and very severe erosion
occurs (Erpul et al., 2018). The average soil loss is 8,42 t ha⁻¹ year⁻¹ (Erpul et al.,
2018). The annual average of erosion occurring in agricultural areas is slightly
above the country average.

Table 3: Distribution of water erosion according to land use at the
national scale.

Land Use Type Erosion Amount (Million tons) Total Erosion (%)

Agriculture 248.6 38.71

Forest 26.8 4.17

Pasture 344.6 53.66
Other 22 3.46

Total 642 100

When the impact of each model parameter on the total soil loss was assessed,
it was concluded that the erosion triggering factors are respectively topography
with 47.55%, vegetation with 34.82% and rainfall with 14.26% (Figure 2). It was
seen that the soil erodibility factor has the lowest impact with 3.36% among
the causes of soil loss (Erpul et al., 2018). When the impact of the parameters
on erosion is assessed at the national scale, topography varies even if it seems
to be impactful. For this reason, in the areas with low slopes, it was found that
erosion was directly associated with the factors of rainfall and land cover.

142 Journal of Environment, Urban and Climate