Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

STUDYING RUNOFF AND WATER EROSION BY USING GEOWEPP MODEL IN SHEIKH BADR REGION – SYRIA

Abdo Abdullah Gassar and Omran Al-Shihabi

Abstract

The water erosion of the soil is a major factor of the land degradation factors in the coastal cliffs in Syria, and it represents a threat to soil, water, plants and the environment in the long run, where it gets the loss amounts importance of nutrients and organic matter in the surface layer of the soil and then deposited in the end on the roads, wells and waterways. For a reduction from the problem requires the knowledge about the water erosion rates and an understanding of the factors (the characteristics of each of the soil and the plant, climate and topography) and mechanical and hydrological processes that lead to the soil erosion, and there is a need to understand the interaction between these factors and processes together that cause soil loss, and understand Erosion phenomenon is not easy in natural conditions especially if the region is complex from where soil, topography, and multi vegetation cover as like the Syrian coastal conditions so this study came to shed light on an important side from the soil conservation sides, it is the water erosion, from through GeoWEPP model application that works within an program ArcGIS and compare it with EU report “ CoLD (2004)” that used only ArcGIS for the study of water erosion of the soil in the area of Sheikh Badr. Showed the results of the study that the use of physical models such as the GeoWEPP Model in order to study the amount of erosion will help to determine the areas most vulnerable to erosion and will show the impact of the suitable maintenance procedures to mitigation of this phenomenon, while the descriptive study, like the report CoLD (2004) could be a beginning point to shed light and determine areas and watersheds that can be the subject of the depth studies of the phenomenon of erosion and determine the means of appropriate management these regions for the management of the water erosion.