Özet:

The agricultural basin of Bafou-North is part of the mountainous domain in Cameroon western highlands, with a humid tropical climate, subjected to intensive exploitation of the soil since the 1980s. This exploitation is followed by a reduction of the vegetation cover and the increased risk of erosion of these soils. In order to assess the extent of this risk, this study proposes to characterize and map the susceptibility of Bafou-North soils to erosion by the multi-criteria weight method under GIS of all the erodibility factors considered in this study. Among other parameters considered, it emerges that the topography through its slope component primarily influences (66.7%) the risk of soil erosion in Bafou-North, followed by pasture (55.87%) and tillage (27.93%). The spatialization of the erodibility factor (K) of Bafou-North soils, which translates the susceptibility to erosion, reveals that nearly 79.89% (6963.37 ha) of the surface area is subject to a risk ranging from moderately high to very high [0.25˂ K≥0.71 t.h/(ha.N)] against 20.11% (1752,88 ha) for fairly resistant soils [0.17˂K≥0.25 t.h/(ha.N)]. This observation therefore challenges all farmers and authorities to further integrate soil conservation methods into their policies for the sustainable management of agricultural land.

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