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Abstract Soil erosion has grown to be a significant problem as a result of land deterioration, increased agricultural production, and other human influences. Every year, Subansiri river in Assam, India which is amongst the largest tributaries of the massive river Brahmaputra continues to see extensive erosion. The present research adopted the empirical approach Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) to determine soil losses along the Subansiri river of Assam, India. The RUSLE approach is formulated upon the assessment of soil loss per unit area and considers a number of different factors, including rainfall erosivity factor (R), soil erodibility factor (K), topography factor (LS), cover and management factor (C), and conservation practices factor (P). In a GIS setting, the RUSLE factors were determined. It is seen that the RUSLE model yields soil erosion rate to be between 0 and 591.05 t ha-1yr-1. Approx. 20 million t yr-1 of soil are lost annually from the research region. Seven categories were used to categorise the different levels of soil erosion from very severe (0.02%), severe (35.14%), very high (25.16%), high (23.12%), moderate (5.02%), low (4.82%) and very low (6.73%). The final result demonstrates that majority of soil erosion takes place in the north and north western regions, which are also areas of high slope angles, and along the Subansiri river and its channels. Therefore, controlling soil erosion in the study region would improve water quality, decrease flood risk and support sustainable agriculture.
Dutta et al. (Fri,) studied this question.