Análisis y modelización de la contribución de la erosión por cárcavas a la producción de sedimentos en la cuenca del Guadalquivir

Gully erosion is widely recognised as an important soil degradation process in many regions, causing important on-site (e.g. soil losses, environmental degradation, crop losses...) and off-site effects (e.g. muddy floods, water pollution, reservoir siltation...). In contrast to other erosion processes, as for instance sheet and rill erosion, where models have been successfully developed and tested extensively over the world, no widely accepted model exists for gully erosion. The reasons for this are the varied and complex subprocesses involved in gully erosion, the factors that control it and, its dependence on the spatial and temporal scale of study. Notwithstanding the above, gully erosion has been proved to be the major erosion process contributing to the total sediment yield in various regions, especially in the Mediterranean Region. This is particularly the case of the Guadalquivir River Basin, where the lithology added to the topography and the climate condition make of it a gully prone area. At present, very little information is available on gully processes and dynamics in this area. In this thesis, a complex gully network with a contributing area of 20 km2 was selected as a representative case of the gully prone agricultural landscape of the Campiña of the Guadalquivir River Basin, which land use consists mainly of herbaceous crops and live groves on Vertisols developed over soft parent material (marls and calcareous sandstone). The dynamics of the gully network was study over a period of 57 years by a combination of photointerpretation techniques in a GIS, field surveys and probabilistic approaches. Gully network evolution was derived from a dataset of 10 aerial orthophotos from the period 1956 to 2013. Field data and a Monte Carlo approach were then applied to estimate gully erosion rates dynamics over the study period. Modelling of gully erosion was then assessed by means of the study of the topographic thresholds for gully head initiation and by means of the gully widening rates dynamics. The results showed that gully erosion rate in the study area was 39 ton/ha/year on average, with peaks up to 591 ton/ha/year. However, these gully erosion rates were highly variable over the study period, and therefore the estimation through average values should be taking with caution. The variability on the gully erosion rates obtained highlights the importance of appropriately selecting the time scale on which gully erosion processes are assessed. For the first time, an important temporal variability in the topographic thresholds (TT) values for a given study area was demonstrated. In addition, this TT variability could be correlated to rainfall regime through various rainfall indexes, as for instance the Rainy Day Normal (RDN). A significant correlation between the gully widening rates and the runoff contributing area were found. Variability in gully widening rates were related to a rainfall index expressing the number of days exceeding a threshold rainfall depth of 13 mm. Land use present in the study area (herbaceous crops and olive groves) showed no significant effects on the TT and the widening rates.La erosión por cárcavas es un proceso de degradación del suelo que afecta gravemente a muchas regiones. Estos procesos causan importantes impactos tanto in-situ como ex-situ. A diferencia de lo que ocurre con otros procesos de erosión, como son la erosión laminar y la erosión por regueros, para la erosión por cárcavas no hay desarrollados en la actualidad modelos ampliamente aceptados. Sin embargo, distintos autores han demostrado que la contribución de las cárcavas a la producción total de sedimentos puede superar con creces la del resto de procesos en determinadas regiones, como ocurre por ejemplo en la cuenca del Mediterráneo. En esta tesis se ha analizado una cuenca de la Campiña representativa de las zonas más afectadas por la erosión por cárcavas en la Cuenca del Río Guadalquivir. Mediante técnicas de fotointerpretación de imágenes aéreas, se analizó la dinámica de la red de cárcavas en un periodo de 57 años. Para ello se utilizó una secuencia de 10 ortofotos del periodo comprendido entre 1956 y 2013, con el apoyo de datos de campo. Por último, se avanzó en la modelización de las cabeceras de las cárcavas y del ensanchamiento de las mismas a través de relaciones con el área de contribución, y con índices de precipitación. Los resultados obtenidos mostraron que las tasas de erosión durante el periodo de estudio fueron muy variables, siendo de 39 t ha-1 año-1 el valor medio para el conjunto del periodo y 591 t ha-1 año-1 el máximo obtenido. Por otro lado, se demostró que los umbrales topográficos para la formación de cabeceras pueden variar notablemente a lo largo del tiempo en un mismo área. Por último, se determinó que existe una correlación significativa entre la tasa de ensanchamiento de las cárcavas y el área de contribución aguas arriba. Tanto los umbrales topográficos como las tasas de ensanchamiento pudieron correlacionarse con índices de precipitación. Mientras que, los distintos usos del suelo presentes en la zona de estudio, resultaron poco relevantes para la modelización de los crecimientos en cabecera y en anchura

Finding strategies to reduce soil erosion using modelling tools: a case study in olive orchards of Cordoba (Spain) including sheet and rill erosion, ephemeral and permanent gullies

Trabajo presentado en la EGU General Assembly (2021), celebrada online del 19 al 30 de abril de 2021.Agricultural activity can have a significant effect on the environment. Often, the lack of experimental data leaves simulation models as the only alternative for understanding and assessing such effects and they can be useful for exploring the response of agricultural systems to different scenarios, in order, for example, to minimize soil erosion or the pollution of watercourses by agrochemicals. In this work we present a simulation exercise of the runoff and erosion in two typical olive groves of the Cordoba countryside with contrasting characteristics during the 2009-19 period. The model used is AnnAGNPS, widely tested and very well suited for use in agricultural environments. The specific objectives are: to analyze the applicability of the model confronting its results with data from other nearby areas; to determine the controlling factors of runoff and erosion, such as seasonality; to quantify the importance of the main types of erosion; to explore the response to two different management scenarios. The study areas were two, Matasanos (189.4 ha of intensive olive groves on vertisols) and Morente (4.2 ha of traditional olive groves on degraded and poor vertisols). The first scenario (TC) consists of maintaining the soil bare by means of continuous conventional tillage. The second (CC) considers a temporary vegetation cover (around 70 %) on the lanes. All the possible types of erosion in those areas are considered: sheet and rill, ephemeral gullies (EG) and permanent gullies (PG). For the purposes of the simulations, the EGs are tilled while the PGs are not. The latter show more constant characteristics over time (although they also evolve), and are larger in size (i.e., they were assigned a greater depth). The results show a significant decrease in average annual runoff in CC with respect to TC (38% in Matasanos and 55% in Morente), which is concentrated in the late autumn and winter months. Thus, according to our simulations, still preliminary, the implementation of covers would have achieved one of its objectives, which is to reduce the runoff generated in the watersheds. The sediment yields in both watershed outlets also suffered a significant decrease in CC with respect to TC, going from 4.75 to 1.66 Mg/ha/year and from 16.2 to 6.9 Mg/ha/year in Matasanos and Morente respectively. The simulated erosion rates are consistent with observations made in the area and with other previous simulation exercises. Both sediment export and runoff show a marked seasonality, although erosion occurs somewhat more distributed throughout the year. The different types of erosion take on different importance in each watershed. For example, permanent gullies play a very important role in Morente (46% in TC and 44% in CC), despite they are active at very specific times, probably with extreme events, which is reasonable according to the observations made in the area. The results show that the model is apparently useful with respect to the proposed objectives, allowing the effect of different uses and management on the environment to be contrasted in the medium and long term