Using soil erosion as an indicator for integrated water resources management: a case study of Ruiru drinking water reservoir, Kenya

Abstract

AbstractFunctions and services provided by soils play an important role for numerous sustainable development goals involving mainly food supply and environmental health. In many regions of the Earth, water erosion is a major threat to soil functions and is mostly related to land-use change or poor agricultural management. Selecting proper soil management practices requires site-specific indicators such as water erosion, which follow a spatio-temporal variation. The aim of this study was to develop monthly soil erosion risk maps for the data-scarce catchment of Ruiru drinking water reservoir located in Kenya. Therefore, the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation complemented with the cubist–kriging interpolation method was applied. The erodibility map created with digital soil mapping methods (R2 = 0.63) revealed that 46% of the soils in the catchment have medium to high erodibility. The monthly erosion rates showed two distinct potential peaks of soil loss over the course of the year, which are consistent with the bimodal rainy season experienced in central Kenya. A higher soil loss of 2.24 t/ha was estimated for long rains (March–May) as compared to 1.68 t/ha for short rains (October–December). Bare land and cropland are the major contributors to soil loss. Furthermore, spatial maps reveal that areas around the indigenous forest on the western and southern parts of the catchment have the highest erosion risk. These detected erosion risks give the potential to develop efficient and timely soil management strategies, thus allowing continued multi-functional use of land within the soil–food–water nexus.