Soil erosion and sediment delivery in a mountain catchment under land use change: using point fallout ¹³⁷Cs for calibrating a spatially distributed numerical model

Abstract

Abstract. Soil erosion and sediment yield are strongly affected by land use/land cover (LULC). Spatially distributed erosion models are useful tools for comparing erosion resulting from current LULC with a number of alternative scenarios, being of great interest to assess the expected effect of LULC changes. In this study the soil erosion and sediment delivery model WATEM/SEDEM was applied to a small experimental catchment in the Central Spanish Pyrenees. Model calibration was carried out based on a dataset of soil redistribution rates derived from 137Cs inventories along three representative transects, allowing capture differences per land use in the main model parameters. Model calibration showed a good convergence to a global optimum in the parameter space. Validation of the model results against seven years of recorded sediment yield at the catchment outlet was satisfactory. Two LULC scenarios where then modeled to reproduce the land use at the beginning of the twentieth Century and a hypothetic future scenario, and to compare the simulation results to the current LULC situation. The results show a reduction of about one order of magnitude in gross erosion (3180 to 350 Mg yr−1) and sediment delivery (11.2 to 1.2 Mg yr−1 ha−1) during the last decades as a result of the abandonment of traditional land uses (mostly agriculture) and subsequent vegetation re-colonization. The simulation also allowed assessing differences in the sediment sources and sinks within the catchment.