r.uslek1grass

Usage

Keywords

raster, hydrology, soil, erosion

Overview

r.uslek calculates the USLE K factor, that is the Soil Erodibility Factor. It takes input of soil texture classes (sand, clay, silt) and organic matter, all in range of [0.0-1.0]. The FAO World Soil CD documentation was used to produce the conversion system between soil textures and soil classes. The soil classes are in number of 12 and apparently come from a USDA publication of 1951 (p.209). Once the soil classes have been identified (by vector cross-products tests), a general conversion table was applied for transforming soil classes into K factor.

Notes

r.watershed provides for USLE L, S, LS factors.

Examples

Calculate the USLE K factor (synthetic values, North Carolina sample dataset):

# NC data: simulation
g.region rural_1m -p
r.mapcalc "sand  = 0.11"
r.mapcalc "clay  = 0.47"
r.mapcalc "silt  = 0.42"
r.mapcalc "organ = 0.0136"
r.uslek psand=sand pclay=clay psilt=silt pomat=organ output=usle_k
r.univar usle_k
# Result: uslek = 0.25

Example with small variations (condition: d_sand + d_clay + d_silt => 1.0)

# NC data: simulation
r.mapcalc -s "sand_r = rand(0.09,0.13)"
r.mapcalc -s "clay_r = rand(0.45,0.49)"
r.mapcalc -s "silt_r = rand(0.40,0.44)"
r.mapcalc -s "organ  = rand(0.01,0.70)"
r.mapcalc "temp_sum = sand_r + clay_r + silt_r"
r.mapcalc "sand = sand_r / temp_sum"
r.mapcalc "clay = clay_r / temp_sum"
r.mapcalc "silt = silt_r / temp_sum"
r.mapcalc "test = sand + clay + silt"
r.info -r test
g.remove -f rast name=sand_r,clay_r,silt_r,temp_sum,test
r.uslek psand=sand pclay=clay psilt=silt pomat=organ output=usle_k
r.univar usle_k
# Result: uslek =  variable values

Source code

Available at: r.uslek source code (history)

Accessed: Monday Feb 24 17:50:56 2025

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