Effect of gravel on runoff and erosion characteristics on engineering accumulation slope in windy and sandy area, northern China

Abstract: Different from abandoned field and cropland and natural landscape, engineering accumulation is a special man-made geomorphic unit and has been found much more serious soil erosion. The anthropogenic accelerating erosion poses great threat to ecological environment of construction sites with surrounding regions and seriously hinders local economic growth and improvement of people's living standard. Gravel is always an important composition of depositions and it causes particular erosion characteristics. An indoor artificially simulated rainfall experiment was carried out in the State Key Laboratory of Soil Erosion and Dryland Agriculture on the Loess Plateau, Institute of Soil and Water Conservation, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Ministry of Water Resources, China to investigate runoff hydraulic character and sediment yield process and erosion dynamic mechanism on slope of engineering deposition with different content of gravel. Soil sample, collected from Jingbian, Shanxi (N37°26′08″, E108°54′53″), was evenly mixed with gravel to be used as the main test material. According to preliminary field investigations, the grain diameter≤50mm of gravel was chosen as the gravel for the test and divided into 3 classes with different ranges of diameter: 2-14 mm (small) and 14-25 mm (medium) and 25-50 mm (large). Gravel sample for each test was consisted of 30% small, 50% medium, 20% large gravel. Mass content of gravel designed varied from 0 to 30%. Mobile hydraulic steel tank with the size of 5m×1m×0.6m (length×width×height) was applied for holding test material. Test slope was adjusted to 25° according to construction requirement of standard experimental plot. The results showed that: 1) Flow velocity on soil-rock deposition slope was higher with a maximum amplification of 52.8% during 0-6 min due to the positive effect of gravel on confluence compared to the bare. Whereas it was lower with a maximum damping of 408.5% when rill erosion dominated on the slope because of inhabitation from gravel which was exposed in the rill; 2) In terms of average level in an event, surface roughness increased and runoff, acted as laminar flow, flowed more slowly with smaller velocity on the slope of deposition with gravel. For the accumulation with 30% gravel content, resistance coefficient increased by 88.8%-288.4% and Froude number and flow velocity decreased by 28.9%-41.8% and 0-45.8% respectively compared to the homogeneous; 3)Sediment yield process could fall into 3 stages: quick reduce - smooth transition - fluctuate increase, in the third period, hyper-concentrated flow was easily found on the slope of the bare and the deposition with 10% of gravel, and frequency and degree of gravitational collapse increased with rainfall intensity increasing. The chance of hyper-concentrated flow approximately equaled to 0 for deposition with 20% and 30% of gravel. Relative soil loss ratio decreased exponentially with increasing gravel content; 4) The relationship between soil detachment rate and hydrodynamic parameters could be described with linear function. Unit stream power was the best one of all the hydrodynamic parameters to describe the hydrodynamic process of soil erosion on accumulation with 0 and 10% of gravel contents, whereas stream power tended to be more scientific to study the erosion process on deposition with 20% and 30% gravel contents. The results provide valuble information for the establishment of empirical and process-based model of soil and water loss on engineering accumulation on a national scale.