About WIntErO

Introduction

Soil erosion is one of the most significant causes of land degradation and an important environmental hazard throughout the world, especially in developing countries. Sediment yield and soil erosion are two main constraints on sustainable management of water resources and soil. The quantification of these processes is crucial to design any scientifically based soil and water conservation plan and integrated land management. The acceleration of soil erosion due to human activities on a global scale has led to an increased sediment flow in many parts of the world. Unwanted complementary effects of soil erosion, such as loss of soil fertility, reduced water quality, alteration of the hydrological systems, and environmental contaminations, have been identified as a serious problem for human sustainability. Land cover and land use changes are key factor in controlling the hydrological response of a watershed. Many studies have shown that there is a significant relationship between land use change and soil erosion. Land use change may result in an increase of sediment and nutrient supply to rivers and may affect the water balance in the watershed and its variability, which must be assessed on a local scale. Direct measurement of soil erosion in watersheds and water-sediment sampling is very time consuming and costly. Therefore, the use of soil erosion and sediment yield models at watershed scale is globally raising the interest of specialists. The quantitative understanding of hydrological process at watershed scale also needs the modelling of microscale processes, such as infiltration, permeability and even water and particles transport processes in porous soils. Many models, such as the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEEP), Chemicals, Runoff, and Erosion from Agricultural Management Systems (CREAMS), European Soil Erosion Model (EuroSEM), and Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT), have been developed with varying degrees of complexity in order to fulfil the growing request for a reliable and easy to manage tool to predict erosion and sediment yield. The main problem of the process-based models is the large number of input parameters and the lack of data to validate the model predictions. Therefore, empirical models for soil erosion assessment play an important role in soil conservation planning. The Erosion Potential Method - EPM (Gavrilovic, 1972) is empirical model originally developed for Yugoslavia and used in many studies, especially to investigate the effect of land use on soil erosion and sediment yield. Applicability of the EPM method in analyzing erosion potential using spatial data manipulation techniques (GIS environment) was also applied, the first tested in the research of Globevnik et al (2003). The Intensity of Erosion and Outflow (IntErO) of Spalevic (2011) is a program package with the EPM integrated into the algorithm for Windows Operating System. The WIntErO model is a new generation that is based on the IntErO model, but improved, modernized and with new specific solutions.