Impacts of Grass Coverage and Arrangement Patterns on Runoff and Sediment Yield in Slope-Gully System of the Loess Plateau, China

Both vegetation coverage rates and arrangement patterns have important influences on erosion. Very little previous research focuses on the impacts of spatial vegetation distribution patterns on erosion. The slope-gully system was taken as the research object, which is composed of a 5.0 m long hillslope with a slope gradient of 20° and a 3.0 m long gully slope with a gradient of 50°. A series of scouring experiments with two inflow discharges (3.2 L min−1, 5.2 L min−1) was carried out. The effects of the flow discharges, spatial grass arrangement patterns (US, MS, and DS represent the presence of grass covering on up-hillslope, middle-hillslope, and down-hillslope, respectively) and grass coverage rates (0%, 30%, 50%, 70%, and 90%) on runoff and sediment were studied in this paper. The results indicated that either runoff or sediment yielding was significantly decreased with the grass coverage rates increasing and with the variation of grass arrangement patterns on a hillslope. While grass coverage had more effectiveness in controlling erosion compared with runoff reduction, and DS can control erosion more effectively than US and MS erosion controlling. For the gully slope, erosion significantly increased with the grass coverage rates increasing no matter how the grass arrangement patterns on the hillslope. Therefore, both different grass coverage and different grass arrangement patterns have an influence on erosion processes; any research that only takes care of the single factor mentioned above is not enough to reveal the effects of grass on erosion. In the process of erosion control in the Loess Plateau, taking effective measures both on the hillslope and gully slope will be effective methods of reducing soil erosion.