Comparison of Interpolation Methods for the Mapping of Wind Erosion using the USEPA Model

Wind erosion is one of the environmental problems worldwide, particularly in arid and semi-arid areas of Iran. Different methods and models have been proposed to measure and monitor wind erosion in the recent years. One of the accurate models for measuring f wind erosion is the USEPA model. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quantification of wind erosion with the USEPA model and the comparison of different interpolation methods for drowsing high-precision soil erosion mapping. For this purpose, 50 samples from 0-30 depth were taken from the study area. Based on the analysis of the physical properties of the soil, including the distribution of the primary and secondary particle sizes, climatic parameters such as evaporation and transpiration, rainfall, wind speed and also, the vegetation and topography characteristics of the area, the erosion rates of Q, Q30 and Q50 were measured. Interpolation methods including general kriging, IDW, LPI and RBF were compared. The results showed that the highest erosion emission rate of Q50 was 39 ton ha-1. The highest and lowest erosion rates for the Q30 index were 0.060 and 2.694 ton ha-1, respectively; for the Q index, the highest and lowest erosion rates were 0.009 and 0.055 ton ha-1, respectively. The results also showed that the IDW method for the Q50 index with the minimum error rate (RMSE) values of 3.94 and the mean absolute error (MAE) with the valueof 1.89 had the best performance among the studied models. The LPI model Q had the best performance with the lowest error (0.0086) and absolute absolute error (0.0021).