Estimating the effectiveness of crop management on reducing flood risk and sediment transport on hilly agricultural land – A Myjava case study, Slovakia

The paper focuses on the generation of floods as a principal soil threat and on soil erosion as an additional soil threat on arable lands of hillslope areas. As the most important component of floods causing the degradation of soils on arable lands, surface runoff is analysed in this study. The protective effect of crop management on the generation of surface runoff and sediment transport on arable lands is estimated on a plot and slope scale. The site of the case study, which is located in the Myjava river basin in western Slovakia, is a hilly agricultural field with an area of 29 ha; it is characterised by arable soil, extreme erosion processes, and muddy floods. Field rainfall simulation experiments were combined with physically-based modelling for studying the formation of surface runoff under various soil covers. The field experiments consisted of simulating runoff generation from artificial rainfalls using the Eijkelkamp rainfall simulator on experimental plots with a focus on estimating the volume of surface runoff, the mass of sediments transported by the surface runoff, and the time to runoff. The volumes of the surface runoff and the values of the time to runoff have been applied in the parameterisation of the SMODERP physically-based hydrological model. The hydrological modelling of the surface runoff on the selected slope profile quantified the protective effect of various soil covers on reducing surface runoff. The outcome of the modelling was the maximum allowed lengths of the slope that represent the crucial values for flood and erosion control. When exceeding these critical values, protective measures, e.g., vegetation strips, should be proposed.