Abstract
It has been well known that soil erosion and sediments from alpine agricultural fields are causing severe water quality and turbidity problems in receiving waters. Also these result in the loss of money because farmers have to buy top soils to provide enough root zone in the following year. Thus, there have been needs to reduce soil erosion and sediment discharge into the stream networks. To accomplish this end, an effective erosion control plans should be developed based on scientific research, not by rule of thumb. The Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) has been widely used to estimate the soil erosion in many countries over the years. In this study, the USLE was used to estimate soil erosion potential under different cropping scenarios in HongCheon County, Kangwon. The soil erosion potential for continuous corn cropping was the highest compared with those from continuous potato find average cropping scenarios. This indicates the soil erosion plans need to be established considering cropping system in the field. The Unit Stream Power Erosion-Deposition (USPED) was applied for HongCheon County to estimate soil erosion and deposition areas. The USPED estimated results can be used to complement USLE results in developing effective erosion control plans.