Soil Erosion Assessment For Sustainable Land Management In NW-Syria - Integrating GPS-Surveys Of Water Erosion Damages With GIS-Analyses And Farmers' Experiments

摘要

Soil erosion by water plays a major role in the complex of land degradation processes in NW-Syria. Under semiarid Mediterranean climate the assessment of erosion is a special challenge: Methods and tools have to face high spatial and temporal variability of rainfall events, and runoffs are often torrential. In cooperation with the University of Bonn, ICARDA in Aleppo - the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas -, conducts a BMZ-funded research project for the development of sustainable land management practices in marginal dry areas. Within this project methods and tools for the assessment of water erosion under dryland conditions are developed and tested. A practical and reliable method is desired, which is recommendable as a decision support for the implementation of soil protecting land management.