Advances in Remote Sensing Technology and the Three Poles

15 Extreme Hydrological Event-Induced Temporal Variation in Soil Erosion of the Assiganga River Basin, NW Himalaya

Rohit Kumar¹, Rahul Devrani^2,*, Astha Dangwal¹, Benidhar Deshmukh¹ and Som Dutt³

¹ Discipline of Geology, School of Sciences, Indira Gandhi National Open University, New Delhi 110068, India.² Delhi School of Climate Change & Sustainability, Institution of Eminence, University of Delhi, Delhi, India ³ Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology, 33 GMS Road, Dehradun 248001, India^* Corresponding author

15.1 Introduction

Soil erosion is a significant aspect of land degradation because of its global extent and effect on agriculture and natural resources (Borrelli et al., 2020). It impedes various natural ecosystems such as aquatic and crop production by eroding the top fertile layer rich in nutrients required by plants (Montanarella et al., 2016; Poesen, 2018; Kumar and Hole, 2021) and identified as a threat to sustainable development and growth (Poesen, 2018). Natural factors such as high precipitation, strong wind, catastrophic storms, flash floods, snow avalanches, and anthropogenic activities such as deforestation, mining, and overgrazing, accelerate soil loss (Pani and Carling, 2013; Poesen, 2018; Borrelli et al., 2020). However, in the last two decades, anthropogenic activity and its corresponding land use-changes out-manoeuvre most of the parameters accelerating soil erosion (Borrelli et al., 2013). On a global scale, water-induced global soil erosion has reached ...