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Chemical weathering and gully erosion causing land degradation in a complex river basin of Eastern India: an integrated field, analytical and artificial intelligence approach

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Abstract

Hot and humid subtropical plateau regions are susceptible to land degradation in the form of weathering and gully erosion. Here, we investigate chemical weathering, gully erosion and cohesiveness through field-based measurements with a view to understand the controlling factors of potential land degradation, in complex river basin of the Chotanagpur plateau region in Eastern India. The layers of controlling factors of gully erosion were developed and prioritized considering boosted regression tree (BRT), alternative decision tree (ADT), particle swarm optimization (PSO) and random forest (RF) algorithms in the R software, and the results of these methods were also validated using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The spectroscopic analysis was carried out of collected soil samples to measure the degree of chemical weathering and cohesiveness. Furthermore, the climatic elements like temperature and rainfall were also considered for estimating the chemical weathering. The results of the gully erosion models (i.e., BRT, ADT, PSO and RF) show remarkable accuracy with ROC values of 0.93, 0.89, 0.91 and 0.84, respectively. An advanced decision tree model was integrated with the results of degree of chemical weathering and cohesiveness in geographical information system platform. The land degradation map developed from this approach shows that 10.53% of the study area is highly affected, whereas 17.36% area is moderately affected and the rest of the 73.85% area is less affected by land degradation. Our results provide essential information for policy makers in adopting measures for minimizing and controlling the land degradation. Our novel approach is significant to assess land degradation to a large scale.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to express our thanks to Dr. Thomas Glade (Editor in Chief, Natural Hazards Journal) and anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestion to improve the quality of the manuscript. We are also thankful to The University of Burdwan for the infrastructural assistance. The authors extend their appreciation to the NRDMS, DST, for funding (NRDMS/01/143/016) to carry out this research work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, The University of Burdwan, Bardhaman, West Bengal, 713104, India

    Subodh Chandra Pal, Rabin Chakrabortty, Asish Saha, Indrajit Chowdhuri & Paramita Roy

  2. Department of Geomorphology, Tarbiat Modares University, 14117-13116, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Arabameri

  3. School of Earth Sciences and Resources, China University of Geosciences Bei**g, 29 Xueyuan Road, Bei**g, 100083, China

    M. Santosh

  4. Department of Earth Science, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, 5005, Australia

    M. Santosh

  5. Department of Geography, Raiganj University, Raiganj, Uttar Dinajpur, West Bengal, 733134, India

    Manisa Shit

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Pal, S.C., Chakrabortty, R., Arabameri, A. et al. Chemical weathering and gully erosion causing land degradation in a complex river basin of Eastern India: an integrated field, analytical and artificial intelligence approach. Nat Hazards 110, 847–879 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-021-04971-8

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