Abstract
Soil erosion is a major form of land degradation and has been recognized as a severe environmental problem since late 18th century. In Europe soil erosion affects large areas and it is estimated that about 17 % of the total land area is affected. Sediments, originated by erosion, cause silting of water basins and they also affect water quality in reservoirs because they play an important role by being the ultimate sink of pollutants.
Nowadays, it should be rather a preference to predict the erosion and its control. There are a lot of mathematical models for predicting of reservoir sedimentation. The most widely accepted and utilized empirical model for prediction of water erosion hazards throughout the world is Universal soil loss equation (USLE), developed by Wischmeier and Smith, which computes the average annual soil loss as the product of six major factors whose most likely values at a particular location can be expressed numerically.
This paper is focused on the soil loss calculation using the USLE in the Tisovec catchment situated in the east of Slovakia, with emphasis on the suggestion of the crop/vegetation and management factor (the C factor) calculation, which is related to the land-use and represents the ratio of soil loss from a given vegetal cover. The determination of the average annual C factor is divided into five periods for each of the main periods of the cropping cycle. In accordance with the suggested calculation the total average annual soil loss from the arable land and also soil loss from the whole watershed of the Tisovec river is determined.
