Assessment of Efficiency and Accuracy of USLE and its Versions for Estimating Event Base Sediment in the Semi-Arid Rangelands (Case study: Sanganeh soil conservation research Institute of Mashhad)

Development and improvement of soil erosion estimation schemes with providing feature to examine various strategies effects of land management on soil losses is essential to land science experts. The Universal Soil Loss Equation (USLE) is one of the primitive empirical models in estimation of erosion that is used continuously. In this study, the efficiency amount of USLE and some of its versions include MUSLT¡USLEM¡MUSLE-E¡MUSLE-S, AUSLE and AOF are evaluated in North Khorasan semi-arid rangelands in event base and for 20 selected events. For this goal, the measured sediments due to 20 events in three plots with same characteristics include range land use and without protective measures are considered and compared with estimated values for each version. The results show that the estimated obtained from MUSLT, MUSLE-E, MUSLE-S and USLEM methods have significant correlation with the observed sediment and the modeling procedure in these methods is logical than others. The MUSLT has the lowest Relative Root Mean Square Errors (RRMSE = 4.257) and greatestMean Efficiency(ME=0.011) has a relative efficiency in estimating of observed sediment in event base in the studied area. Other considered methods estimate non-reasonable sediment values.