GIS-based assessment on soil erosion sensitivity of Tianshui region

Soil erosion is a result of comprehensive effect of geographical environment factors. Based on the theory of Universal Soil Loss Equation and utilizing research results of domestic and foreign on soil erosion, this paper analyzed the influences of precipitation, soil texture, slope length and steepness, and land cover on the sensitivity of soil erosion, and assessed the soil erosion sensitivity in accordance with the standard of sensitivity grading and using the methods of mathematics model and GIS analysis. The results show that the overall sensitivity of soil erosion is higher in Tianshui, among which the area of the extremely sensitive and the highly sensitive reaches up to 6559.34 km², counting for 46.05 percentage of total area, while the area of insensitive is smaller, counting for 3.01 percentage of total area. Based on the comprehensively evaluating the spatial difference of soil erosion sensitivity of Tianshui, this paper advanced some countermeasures for land use planning of different sensitivity grades.