Soil erosion risk assesment with MICONA model in Melet River Basin

Soil erosion is an incident that is effective in shaping the surface. However, the acceleration of ero-sion by man is a problem. Erosion problem causes agricultural lands to become infertile and disap-pear over time. This problem is even more pronounced in Turkey which has a rugged topographyand a long history of settlement. Therefore, detailed field studies are needed to determine the sizeof the problem and to solve it. In this study, the risk of erosion of the Melet River Basin was inves-tigated. The Melet River is an important river that separates the Central and Eastern Black Sea di-visions of the Black Sea Region. It emerges from the west-facing slopes of the Karagöl Mountainsand flows into the Black Sea from Ordu City Center. The catchment area of the river is 2006 km2.The basin is bounded by the water section lines passing through the Giresun Mountains from thesouth and the east and the water section lines passing through the Canik Mountains from the west.Erosion risk of the basin was investigated by using the MICONA model developed by adding heightand soil depth data to the ICONA method. While preparing the study, field observations, GIS tech-nologies were used together. The basic raster datas used in the model which NDVI (vegetation den-sity), land use, bedrock, soil depth, height and slope are compiled from field studies, satellite imagesand documents of various government organizations. According to MICONA model, 25.2% of thebasin is very high, 20.1% is high and 27.2% has moderate erosion risk. In return, 17.2% of the basinhas a low erosion risk and a very low erosion risk of 10.3%. The areas with the highest erosion riskin the area are concentrated upper course of the basin where in the west of Karagöl. In the west ofMesudiye, the topography is simplified and the risk of erosion decreases