Estimating a mathematical formula of soil erosion under the effect of rainfall simulation by digital close range photogrammetry technique

Abstract

A new design of soil erosion and rainfall simulator is presented at this study as an attempt to deduce a mathematical formula of soil surface erosion phenomenon to describe the behavior of the sandy soil under the rainfall simulation, soil deformation such gullies and surface eroding rills are monitored by the Digital Close Range Photogrammetry (DCRP) technique that includes capturing digital images with a smart cellphone camera, and a Terrestrial Laser Scanner (TLS) to digitalize the soil surface as a smart point cloud data to produce Digital Elevation Models (DEM) with accuracy reaches 0.10 mm 3D surface model. The results show that the mentioned methods give typical digital surface feature express especially of using geometrical adjustment that controls the orientation of the digital surface, the digital imaging feature detection technology achieves accurate results despite its small cost compared to the laser scanner that the cost of imaging equipment and software are used did not exceed 12% of TLS cost. Results of the statistical observations, a 3 order polynomial mathematical formula was generated through the digital photogrammetry method that describes the sandy soil behavior under the rainfall simulation as a relation between the eroding rate and the duration through the different slopes.