Abstract:

Erosion is the rapidly eroded of soil by natural factors such as water and wind as a result of vegetation are destroyed by human, climate and physiographic factors. The most important element of natural balance is the vegetation that keeps and protects the soil against erosion. In Turkey which has arid and semi-arid climate conditions, especially in the spring and summer, sudden and heavy rains and fast winds blowing cause erosion. The purpose of this study, which is carried out Halfalı Stream Catchment of Kahramanmaras province, is to determine the importance of vegetation for soil erosion by obtaining the map of the cover management factor (C) in the RUSLE equation by remote sensing techniques. For this purpose, Landsat satellite image (174 path, 34 row) derived from Mapper sensor of 2013 were used. The actual land use map was obtained by applying supervised classification using ERDAS Imagine program. According to data derived from actual land use map, study area is consisted of 21.74% poor rangeland, 17.12% fair rangeland, 27.44% agriculture, 8.48% degraded forests and 25.22% productive forest areas. In addition, C factor values of the study area were determined as 0.42 for thin forest, 0.39 for forest, 0.36 for weak pasture, 0.26 for medium pasture and 0.38 for agriculture.

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