Keywords
Abstract
Accelerating land degradation driven by water induced soil erosion pose one of the most critical threats to agriculture sustainability and watershed health humid subtropical region of india. This Study presents a spatially explicit assessment of soil erosion risk across the Dulung River Basin (116,385.72 ha) in Jhargram district, West Bengal, employing the Revised universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) model integrated within the Google Earth Engine (GEE) cloud computing platform. Multi source geospatial dataset including CHIRPS 2023 precipitation recodes, NASA SRTM 30 m digital elevation data, OpenLandMap soil texture grids at 250 m resolution, Sentinel-2 multispectral imagery at 10 m resolution, and ESA WorldCover 10 m land cover maps were used to compute the five RUSLE factor layers: rainfall erosivity (R), soil erodibility (K), slope length and steepness (LS), cover management (C), and support practice (P). Estimated Average annual soil loss across of the basin is 15.64 t ha-1 yr-1. The Spatial distribution reveals that 36.04% of the basin comes under the moderate erosion class (10-20 t ha-1 yr-1), while 39.68% records only slight loss(<10 t ha-1 yr-1). Zones of high, and severe erosion collectively affect 24.23% of the area, concentrated primarily in the steep terrain of the northern sub catchments. The LS factor emerged as the dominant driver of spatial variability in erosion intensity. Spatially, Severe to high erosion is concentred in the northern Binpur-I and Binpur-II blocks, particularly around Shyam Sunderpur , Dharsa, Parihati, Kanimahuli, and Gidhni, where steep lateritic slopes and sparse vegetation amplify soil loss. The central Jamboni and Jhargram blocks fall within moderate to high erosion range, while the southern Gopiballavpore-II and Sankrail blocks record the lowest erosion rates owing to gentle terrain and dense agricultural cover. The findings provide a basin wise erosion risk inventory that can guide prioritisation of conservation interventions such as contour bunding, terracing, and vegetative buffers in the most vulnerable zones.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Rahul Debnath, Prasanna Mahata, Kisor Dandapat (Author)