A geographic information system-based land use impact model to map areas with risk for land degradation: Wind erosion as an example

Wind erosion modeling is hampered by the complexity of the relationships between factors involved in this process and the absence of comprehensive empirical data. In this study, we developed a geographic information system-based Land Use Impact Model and investigated its potential use for assessing the wind erosion risk in different land uses and wind geomorphic units. The obtained results were validated by field measurements and observations using a wind erosion simulator. Comparing the measured wind erosion intensities by the wind erosion simulator with those from the likelihood map obtained from the model revealed the high potency of the developed model for assessing land degradation due to wind erosion in our data scarce arid studied regions. Almost 90% of the mapping units in the likelihood map had similar wind erosion classes to the measured values. Furthermore, there was a high wind erosion occurrence risk in most parts of the studied regions (i.e., about 64% of the study area), and no mapping units in the study area were classified as 'very low' risk class. In addition, only about 9% of the surveyed mapping units were classified as a 'low' risk class, indicating an undesirable situation of the study area with regard to wind erosion.