Spatiotemporal changes of soil and water loss (2012–2019) in three government-divided regions, Chongqing Municipality, China

Abstract

Abstract Understanding the changes in soil and water loss is important to make the regional sustainable development strategies for administrative department. This study compiled a series of datasets from 2012 to 2019 at the county scale to investigate the changes in soil and water loss in three government divided regions, i.e., urban region (UR), northeast region (NER) and southeast region (SER) in Chongqing Municipality, China. The area percentage of soil and water loss over moderate degree (OMD) in each year and change rate for the area of soil and water loss (CR) on the basis in 2012 for each region were compared. The area of soil and water loss decreased by 22.3%, 18.7% and 14.2% in the UR, NER and SER, respectively, from 2012 to 2019. The area of soil and water loss in NER almost accounted for 50% of the total area of soil and water loss in Chongqing City. The OMD decreased from 66.06% in 2012 to 24.84% in 2019. The CR always presented significantly declined trend (P < 0.05) with the year in the UR, NER and SER, respectively. Our results are valuable to developing reasonable conservation strategies for the local government to control soil and water loss.