Analysis of Soil Erosion Reduction Ratio with Changes in Soil Reconditioning Amount for Highland Agricultural Crops

There is increased soil erosion potential at highland agricultural crop fields because of its topographic characteristics and site-specific agricultural management practices performed at these areas. The agricultural upland fields are usually located at the sloping areas, resulting in higher soil loss, pesticides, and nutrients in case of torrential rainfall events or typhoon, such as 2002 Rusa and 2003 MaeMi. At the highland agricultural fields, the soil reconditioning have been performed every year to decrease damage by continuous cropping and pests. Also it has been done to increase crop productivity and soil fertility. The increased amounts of soil used for soil reconditioning are increasing over the years, causing significant impacts on water quality at the receiving water bodies. In this study, the field investigation was done to check soil reconditioning status for potato, carrot, and cabbage at the Doam-dam watershed. With these data obtained from the field investigation, the Soil and Water Assesment Tool (SWAT) model was used to simulate the soil loss reduction with environment-friendly and agronomically enough soil reconditioning. The average soil reconditioning depth for potato was 34.3 cm, 48.3 cm for carrot, and 31.2 cm for cabbage at the Doam-dam watershed. These data were used for SWAT model runs. Before the SWAT simulation, the SWAT ArcView GIS Patch, developed by the Kangwon National University, was applied because of proper simulation of soil erosion and sediment yield at the sloping watershed, such as the Doam-dam watershed. With this patch applied, the Coefficient of Determination ($R^2$) value was 0.85 and the Nash-Sutcliffe Model Efficiency (EI) was 0.75 for flow calibration. The $R^2$ value was 0.87 and the EI was 0.85 for flow validation. For sediment simulation, the $R^2$ value was 0.91 and the EI was 0.70, indicating the SWAT model predicts the soil erosion processes and sediment yield at the Doam-dam watershed. With the calibrated and validated SWAT for the Doam-dam watershed, the soil erosion reduction was investigated for potato, carrot, and cabbage. For potato, around 19.3 cm of soil were over applied to the agricultural field, causing 146% of more soil erosion rate, approximately 33.3 cm, causing 146% of more soil erosion for carrot, and approximately 16.2 cm, causing 44% of more soil erosion. The results obtained in this study showed that excessive soil reconditioning are performed at the highland agricultural fields, causing severe muddy water issues and water quality degradation at the Doam-water watershed. The results can be used to develop soil reconditioning standard policy for various crops at the highland agricultural fields, without causing problems agronomically and environmentally.

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