Soil Erosion by Water

Objectives
Chapter 1 Processes and Mechanics of Water Erosion summarizes the prevailing mechanical principles of processes related to soil erosion by water on hillslopes, such as infiltration, rainsplash detachment and transport, interrill detachment, particle transport, rill erosion, and sediment continuity.

Chapter 2 Soil Conservation Measures merely enumerates soil conservation strategies and measures without explaining their effects and modes of action in details.

Finally, Exercises aim to reflect and discuss which of the driving factors of soil erosion processes may be influenced by soil conservation measures, and which influence the various soil conservation measures will have on soil erosion processes.

Demarcations
Some specific topics in terms of soil erosion are explicitly not subject of this document: • Gully erosion, mass movements, and soil erosion by wind as specific types of soil erosion with very different processes, • The economic, social, and ecologic effects of soil erosion on goods, soil, plants, and creatures, waters, and landscape as a whole, • The variety of specific soil erosion research methods, and their suitablility to derive process-related equations, • The topics of erosion hazard assessment, and of erosion modelling.

Literature listed in section Further Reading is recommended for further information on topics such as these.

Table of Contents
 Chapter 1: Processes and Mechanics of Water Erosion 
 * 1)  Process Basics  
 * 2)  Soil Hydrologic Basics  
 * 3)  Rainsplash  
 * 4)  Soil Detachment by Interrill Overland Flow  
 * 5)  Transport of Soil Particles by Interrill Flow  
 * 6)  Rill Erosion  
 * 7)  Sediment Continuity  
 * 8)  Further Reading  

 Chapter 2: Soil Conservation Measures 


 * 1)  Strategies  
 * 2)  Techniques  

 Exercises 


 * 1)  Exercise A  
 * 2)  Exercise B