Measuring and mapping excessive linear soil erosion features: rills and gullies

Abstract Accelerated soil erosion is an earth surface process that threats sustainable land management. Among different forms of soil erosion, rills, gullies, and landslides are the most dominant features, which have a considerable contribution in sediment yield at the landscape and catchment scale. Rill erosion may contribute as a significant erosion process in a landscape by the removal of topsoil layer while gully erosion removes the entire soil profile causing extreme land degradation. Therefore, to design effective sediment management strategies, there is a need to having a fundamental knowledge of rill and gully erosion development processes, measurements, and monitoring techniques, in particular, new technologies and approaches. This chapter briefly explores these topics with a greater focus on the definition, significance, and characteristics of rill and gully erosion as well as their measurement methods including both traditional (direct) methods and new (indirect) methods. Finally, the data mining technique is mentioned as a tool for analyzing and evaluating rill and gully erosion.