Journal of Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers ISSN:1738-3692(Print) 2093-7709(Online) 한국농공학회논문집

Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) is suggested and employed in the policy to conserve soil resources and to manage the impact of development, since soil loss is very essential to nonpoint source pollution management. The equation requires only five factors to estimate average annual potential soil loss, USLE is simplicity provides benefits in use of the equation. However, it is also limitation of the model, since the estimated results are very sensitive to the five factors. There is a need to examine the application procedures. Three approaches to estimate potential soil loss were examined, In the first approach, all factors were prepared with raster data, soil loss were computed for each cell, and sum of all cell values was determined as soil loss for the watersheds. In the second approach, the mean values for each factor were defined as representing USLE factors, and then the five factors were multiplied to determine soil loss for the watersheds. The third approach was same as the second approach, except that the Vegetative and Mechanical measure was used instead of the Cover and management factor and Support practice factor. The approaches were applied in 38 watersheds, they displayed significant difference, moreover no trends were detected for the soil loss at watersheds with the approaches. Therefore, it was concluded that there is a need to be developed and provided a typical guideline or public systems so that soil loss estimations have consistency with the users.