PROGRESS IN GEOGRAPHY ›› 2008, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (6): 49-56.doi: 10.11820/dlkxjz.2008.06.007

• Original Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Analysis on Spatial Scaling Effects of Water Erosion in the Yellow River Basin

LI Xiuxia, LI Tianhong, NI Jinren   

  1. Department of Environmental Engineering, Peking University, The Key Laboratory of Water and Sediment Sciences, Ministry of Education, Beijing 100871, China
  • Received:2008-04-01 Revised:2008-09-01 Online:2008-11-25 Published:2008-11-25

Abstract:

The spatial similarity between water erosion and its influencing factors at different spatial scales is analyzed based on the information entropy theory. Four grades of river basins including the Yellow River basin, Yanhe basin, Xingzihe basin and Zhifanggou basin are taken as case studies. By comparing the spatial similarities between water erosion and a certain influencing factor on different grades of basins, the spatial scaling effects of soil erosion are quantitatively analyzed. The results provide different contributions of the indexes of precipitation, landform, soil type and vegetation to soil erosion at different spatial scales. And the order of the factors' importance to soil erosion at a certain spatial scale is also obtained. As a whole, with the basin scale enlarging, the control effects of micro-factors decrease, and the control effects of macrofactors increase simultaneously. The quantitative analysis method of soil erosion spatial scaling and the study results are significant in dealing with the problems of scale conversion and regional universality of soil erosion assessment models.

Key words: information entropy, soil erosion, spatial scaling effects, spatial similarity, Yellow River basin