Large-Scale Detection of the Tableland Areas and Erosion-Vulnerable Hotspots on the Chinese Loess Plateau

Tableland areas, featured by flat and broad landforms, provide precious land resources for agricultural production human settlements over the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). However, severe gully erosion triggered extreme rainfall intense activities makes tableland areas shrink continuously. Preventing loss of is real urgency, in which generating its accurate distribution map critical prerequisite. a plateau-scale inventory still lacking across Plateau. This study proposed large-scale approach area mapping. The Sentinel-2 imagery was used initial delineation based on object-based image analysis random forest model. Subsequently, drainage networks extracted from AW3D30 DEM were applied correcting commission omission errors law that rivers streams rarely appear areas. automatic mapping performs well, with overall accuracies 90% all four investigated subregions. After strict quality control manual inspection, high-quality at 10 m resolution generated, demonstrating occupied 9507.31 km2 CLP. Cultivated dominant land-use type yet multi-temporal observations indicated it has decreased approximately 500 during year 2000 to 2020. In contrast, artificial surfaces increased 57.53% 73.10%, respectively. Additionally, we detected 455 vulnerable hotspots width less than 300 m. Particular attention should be paid these prevent potential split large tableland, accompanied damage roads buildings. erosion-vulnerable are expected support environmental protection policymaking sustainable development CLP region severely threatened soil degradation.