Özet:

Soil erosion is the most important land degradation worldwide. Turkish soils are highly threatened by erosion mainly due to natural physical-geographic conditions as well as historic and current land-use. A number of soil erosion studies have been per-formed for different parts of Turkey; however, no erodibility potential-related data is available for Gaziantep province. In this study we evaluate the susceptibility of agricul-tural land in Gaziantep province to erosion (erodibility potential) by the use of the erodibility factor K on the basis of the soil texture, soil organic matter (SOM) content, soil aggregation and water permeability. Moreover, the nutrient supply of soils was in-vestigated in order to further elucidate the impact of soil erosion on soil fertility. The study revealed that all investigated soils had to be categorized as threatened by erosion due to a high to extremely high erodibility potential, with K-factors ranging between 0.33 and 0.79. Further K-factor was positively correlation to SOM as well as aggregate stability (ΔGMD) mainly due to grain-size compositions. According to these results, there is a generally high risk of erosion for the investigated soils and future erosion events might also be followed by a measurable loss of nutrients and subsequently loss of soil fertility. As a major outcome of the present survey, a regional soil protection concept should be developed and implemented for Gaziantep region, wherein the study results provide a basis for information sessions with regard to erosion.

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