Abstract:
Soil and water conservation is one of the most important parts of ecological civilization, river management and rural revitalization. Erosion control has been an effective means to improve the quality and stability of the ecosystem, particularly for the complex and widely distributed erosion environment in China. There are a large number of loss areas unsuitable for treatment or without treatment potential. However, the remote sensing monitoring of soil and water loss at the regional scale still cannot fully meet the precise control needs of potential, suitability, and urgency in the soil and water conservation at present. This study aims to explore the spatial positioning on the soil erosion for counties, small watersheds and plots. According to the "county-small watershed-plot", multi-level control strategy of soil and water loss was also carried out for the systematic management and classification. A systematic evaluation was also conducted to refine the severity and suitability of soil and water loss in small watersheds. The study area was taken from the Pu'an County, a karst area in Guizhou Province, China. The "three-layer iteration" spatial identification was performed on the soil erosion plots. Remote sensing monitoring of soil erosion was connected to identify the suitable control objects. The priority management degree of small watershed was evaluated quantitatively, according to the two dimensions of soil erosion severity and appropriate management. The soil and water conservation rates were then obtained for the technical support and decision-making basis. The results showed that the soil and water loss in Pu'an County was concentrated mainly in the cultivated land, forest land and grassland, which were accounted for 60.12%, 25.77% and 7.73% of the total soil and water loss in the county. Some small parts were also distributed in gardens and the rest land use types. Furthermore, the relative error of the total area of soil and water loss was less than 1%, and the relative error of the area of different land use types was less than 5%, compared with the remote sensing monitoring. The overall accuracy rate of the erosion intensity level was 95.82% in the soil erosion plots. The soil and water loss was concentrated on the arable land, forest, and grassland. The priority of small watershed was greater than 0.6, accounting for 6.31% of the total small watershed in the county. According to the centralized contiguous means, the easy control strategies were formulated to simulate the expected reduction of soil and water loss areas. It was estimated that 3.44 km
2 of soil and water loss area needed to be controlled by 2025, 43.35 km
2 from 2023 to 2030, and 46.26 km
2 from 2030 to 2035, in order to achieve the goal of phased soil and water conservation rate. The research can provide the technical support and scientific decision-making basis for the precise prevention and control of soil erosion. Regional soil and water conservation can be improved to effectively assess the target responsibility.